Zeus on the Loose

by John Dougherty

“Yes, miss!” Troy and I called out together.

  Miss Wise looked at us thoughtfully.

  “Perhaps you’d better all come out with me,” she said after a moment.

  Out in the playground, Mr Cameron and Miss Wise swung open the big black iron gates. The vaulting horse stood innocently outside.

  “Best do it in bits,” Mr Cameron said. “We’ll lift the top bit off first.”

  I froze. If they did that, they’d be bound to see Charlie. I had no idea what the punishment was for sneaking out of school hidden in a piece of gym apparatus, but I was sure it would be something horrible. Already they were reaching for the handles to pull the top off the horse. I had to do something – but what?

  “Hang on, miss!” I yelled. “Why don’t you just push it?”

  Miss Wise rolled her eyes again. I think she was a bit fed up with me.

  “Because, Alex,” she said, gripping the handles, “the bottom of the horse would get scratched on the tarmac.” She looked at Mr Cameron. “Ready?” she said.

  “No, it wouldn’t, miss!” I said desperately. “It wouldn’t get scratched! It’s on a sort of trolley thing with wheels on! Look!”

  I said that last bit as loud as I could. And then I held my breath. Because I knew it wasn’t on a trolley – yet. And if Zeus couldn’t hear me, or didn’t take the hint, I was definitely going to get the biggest telling-off ever.

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Alex!” Miss Wise said. “I really don’t know what’s got into you today, but if it carries on, you and I are going to have a serious talk—”

  “Hold on, Miss Wise!” Mr Cameron interrupted. “Take a look at this! He’s right!”

  I breathed out again.

  Miss Wise and Mr Cameron scratched their heads a bit and said things like, “Well, where did that come from?” and, “I could’ve sworn it wasn’t there a moment ago,” and then they shrugged, and got behind the horse and began to push.

  Then Hélène said, “Miss Wise? What is this thing called?”

  “It’s called a vaulting horse, Hélène.”

  Hélène put her hand to her mouth and giggled.

  “So this is like the story you were telling us! Of the wooden horse being brought through the big gates!”

  And then everyone laughed and started cheering and shouting, “Hooray! The Greeks have given up and gone home!” and things like that.

  And as soon as the horse was in the playground, some of us got behind it and helped to push, pretending we were Trojans. Which meant that as I pushed, I could press my ear against the horse and listen. Sure enough, under the noise of everyone laughing, I heard two voices.

  “What next?” one of them said.

  “Next,” said the other, “we wait until they’re all asleep and then we let our army in and kill them!”

  “Er … we haven’t got an army, have we?” said the first voice, which of course was Charlie’s.

  “Good point,” the second one – Zeus – said. “We’ll just have to jump out and kill them ourselves.”

  “You’re joking!” Charlie said. “There’s no way! Miss Wise’d be furious if I killed her!”

  And then there was a bump and my ear got mashed against the horse.

  “Come on!” Mr Cameron said. “We can’t wheel it up the steps! Time to take the top off!”

  And before I could stop them, they did.

  There was a moment of shocked silence.

  We all stood and stared down at Charlie.

  Charlie stared up at us.

  And then … well, words fail me. He was brilliant. He jumped up and yelled, “Miss Wise! It’s you! Oh, thank goodness!”

  He scrambled out of the horse and threw his arms around her.

  “I thought it was that man!” he gasped. “I thought he was going to catch me!”

  Before she knew it, Miss Wise was patting him on the back and saying, “There, there, Charlie! It’s all right. You’re safe,” and Charlie was blurting out this story about how the man in the playground had scared him so much he’d run in and hidden in the vaulting horse. Then he’d felt it being lifted onto the trolley and pushed out of school, and he’d heard the gates clang shut, and then he’d heard a police siren and whoever it was pushing the horse had run away …

  Just for a moment, I couldn’t believe it. Charlie isn’t exactly the quickest thinker in the world. How on earth had he come up with that amazing story?

  And then I realized.

  I sneaked a look at his ear. Sure enough, I could just see this tiny golden beetle in there, whispering to him and telling him what to say.

  The rest of the day was quite quiet after that. Some police officers came and asked us questions about the man who had been seen in the playground, and told us all never to talk to strangers. Miss Wise was really nice to Charlie. Zeus was happy because he’d had a sort of Trojan horse, and was unbearably pleased with himself for having got Charlie out of trouble. And the Head held an extra assembly and told us all there was obviously a gang of international gym equipment thieves working in the area and if ever we saw anyone suspicious in the playground we should tell Mr Cameron.

  After school, I popped into the newsagent to stock up on roast beef flavoured crisps. As we were leaving, Zeus said to me, “Did you know that after the war of Troy it took Odysseus ten years to get home again?”

  I got home as fast as I could, and checked the calendar just in case.

  Chapter Six

  Gifts for the Gods

  In the middle of the night, I was woken by someone tapping on the window.

  Which is odd, because my bedroom’s on the top floor of the house.

  I got up, went to the window and drew back one of the curtains. There, sitting on the windowsill outside, was a magnificent golden eagle.

  “About time!” it grumbled. “Come on, you stupid High Priest! Let me in! I’ve been out here tapping for ages! My beak’s getting sore!”

  I opened the window and Zeus hopped through. He landed on the carpet and changed himself into a big bearded bloke in a bed-sheet again.

  “I was bored,” he explained. “So I went out for a flap around. I didn’t realize how sore tapping on the window would be. Come on! I need a really special sacrifice to make me feel better!”

  “No way, Zeus!” I told him, getting back into bed. “It’s the middle of the night! Morning sacrifice isn’t for hours yet.”

  Zeus scowled.

  “Who’s the god here, buster?” he growled. “If I say it’s sacrifice time, then it’s sacrifice time, OK?”

  “No,” I told him. “It is quite definitely not OK. Morning sacrifice is too early as it is. If you want a sacrifice any earlier, you can do it yourself.”

  Zeus stuck his tongue out.

  “All right then, Mister Grumpy,” he said. “I jolly well will.”

  He opened my sock drawer and took out the old battered model temple and a bag of roast beef flavoured crisps.

  I turned the light off.

  In the dark, there was the rustling sound of a crisp bag being opened, and then Zeus began mumbling:

  “Hmm … let’s see. I’ve never really prayed to myself before. I wonder what the best way is to start? How about … yeah, this’ll do … O great and mighty Me, greatest of all gods, I thank Me that I’m so great and mighty and, er, great … THAT’S OK, IT’S EASY REALLY. Yes, I suppose it is. Anyway, I pray that I will bring good weather today. WELL, YES, OF COURSE I WILL. ANYTHING ELSE? Yes, I pray that I will wake this stupid High Priest up so that he decides to do the sacrifice after all. YES, I CAN DO THAT, TOO. I’LL DO IT RIGHT NOW IF YOU LIKE. WAKE UP, YOU STUPID HIGH PRIEST!”

  I sat up and turned the light on again. Zeus was sitting with the model temple on his head and his nose in the crisp bag, but he was looking at me.

  “That’s better,” he said. “It’s no fun praying to myself. Come on, finish the sacrifice so I can go.”

  “Oh, all right,” I grumbled – and then I realized exactly what he’d just said.
“Hang on a minute. Go? Go where?” I asked him.

  “Back to Olympus, of course. I’m fed up here. It’s dead boring. No one wants to die a glorious death in battle, and there aren’t any roast bulls. It’s more fun back home with the other gods.”

  “And that’s it?” I demanded. “I do all this High Priesting for you, sort out all the problems you cause, sacrifice to you day and night, and you’re just going to scarper?”

  Zeus looked hurt.

  “Of course not,” he said. “You must think I’ve got no manners at all. No, I have a reward for my faithful High Priest.”

  A reward! This was more like it! Zeus was a god, after all. Maybe he was going to give me a magical wallet that never ran out of money, or a pair of football boots that always scored! Maybe even some kind of special power, like the gift of flight or the ability to talk to the animals! I looked up at him and waited.

  “Yes, o loyal and trustworthy High Priest,” he told me, smiling generously, “as a reward for all your devoted service, I’m going to let you sacrifice to the other gods too!”

  My face fell.

  “Oh,” I said sarcastically, “thanks a bunch. That’s just what I wanted. Great.”

  “Don’t mention it,” Zeus smiled, missing the sarcasm completely. “But just this once, OK? Don’t go sacrificing to them when I’m not around, or I might get cross.”

  “I don’t think that’ll be a problem,” I said. “But I haven’t got enough crisps to sacrifice to all the other gods. There are lots of them, aren’t there?”

  Zeus laughed. “Oh, not that sort of sacrifice,” he said. “I mean the sort of sacrifice where you give up something that belongs to you.”

  Just for a moment, I was speechless.

  “Let me get this straight,” I said. “As a reward for everything I’ve done for you – you’re going to let me give away my own property?”

  Zeus grinned.

  “Well,” he said, “I can’t go on holiday without bringing back presents for my family, can I?”

  So I spent my last few hours as the High Priest of Zeus digging around in the backs of cupboards, looking for holiday souvenirs for the Greek gods of Mount Olympus. In the end, we managed to find enough for everyone, though it wasn’t easy because Zeus said each present had to have something to do with the god it was for.

  Here is what Zeus finally ended up with:

  * For Hera, goddess of women: one of my mum’s old Just for Women magazines

  * For Hermes, god of trickery: a joke plastic dog poo

  * For Ares, god of war: a couple of toy soldiers and a water pistol

  * For Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty: a pink plastic mirror with glitter and hearts all over it, left by my soppy cousin Sarah last time she visited

  * For Hephaestus, god of fire and metalwork: a box of matches and a wire coat-hanger

  * For Artemis, goddess of the moon: an inflatable spaceship

  * For Apollo, god of music and the sun: half a bottle of sun-screen and a kazoo

  * For Athene, goddess of arts and crafts: a packet of felt-tip pens

  * For Hades, god of the dead: this was a tricky one. Luckily while we were searching my cat came in and dropped a dead mouse at my feet. “Perfect!” Zeus said. “He’ll love it!”

  * For Dionysus, god of wine and happiness: a smiley-face badge

  * For Hestia, goddess of the hearth and the hearth-fire: a lump of barbecue charcoal

  * For Demeter, goddess of the corn: a bag of tortilla chips

  * And for Poseidon, god of the sea: my old water-wings and a can of tuna

  I put everything in a carrier bag and gave it to Zeus. And he disappeared.

  Just like that. No “thank you”, no “well done, High Priest”, not even a “goodbye”. He just went. And I went back to bed, feeling pretty grumpy.

  I had a rotten time at school the next day. Apart from the fact that I felt so tired, I was cross with Zeus for not having said goodbye. Even though he’d been a real nuisance, I sort of missed him. The worst bit, in a way, was when Charlie – who didn’t know yet that Zeus had gone – asked Miss Wise if she could read us a story about Zeus being nice to everyone and not starting any wars, and just for a moment I nodded, forgetting that Zeus wasn’t there any more.

  I was still in a real mood when I got home after school. I went up to my room to get changed out of my school uniform, with something in my head still half-wondering if Zeus would be there after all. But the hamster-cage was still empty.

  Or almost empty. As I glanced at it, I noticed something shiny in the corner – something that hadn’t been there before.

  It was a tiny golden thunderbolt on a chain. And with it was a note.

  It read:

  I felt a lot better. It’s nice to be thanked. In fact, now my only regret was – well, it’ll sound silly after all the trouble he’d caused, but Zeus had taken a present for all the Olympian gods. Suddenly I found myself wishing that he’d taken something for himself, too – something to remember me by.

  And then my mum knocked on my bedroom door and said, “Alex – have you seen my best nightie anywhere?”

  THE END