Rampage! (22 page)

But there were stranger jobs too:

Rose gulped, understanding that what she actually held in her hands must be an account of the
Argo’s
voyage. Of course, her mother would have fainted clean away by now, she realised, flopped out on the floor, the toes of her sensible shoes turned to the ceiling, flummoxed at discovering such a prize for archaeology. But Rose, more curious than ever to find out about Medea when she was younger, read on.

Skimming past maps of islands and a drawing of a harpy like the one she’d fought back at the British Museum, she noticed that someone, probably the journal-keeper, had scrawled his name at the bottom of the parchment. It was blurry with water stains, but she could just about make it out: Echion. Whoever he was.

She unfurled the scroll a little more and spotting the phrase that had snagged in her memory, began to read:

Feeling a tingle of hope, Rose carried on reading, trying to imagine a different Medea, one who’d actually used her power for good.

Rose frowned. In this version Jason hardly sounded like the rufty-tufty Greek hero she’d read about in stories and, for a moment, it struck her as strange. But then, as she reminded herself now, Medea was hardly turning out to be the way she’d imagined either.

Rose sat back and tried to picture the sorceress, cupping the monster’s head, lulling its fearsome snout until its eyelids drooped closed, to protect it against the Argonauts. All right, it was a bit on the gruesome side,
what with her pet being a massive man-eating serpent rather than, say, your average hamster or fluffy kitten with a tinkling bell on its collar, but she’d still shown it true kindness.

Quickly uncurling the rest of the parchment, Rose felt a small jab of disappointment to discover that it was completely blank. Water stains and patches of crusted salt mottled its vellum in place of any more words and for a moment she wondered if the scroll had fallen into the sea. That would certainly explain the crumpling and the lack of any more entries. Yet, if that was so, then someone, someone with more power than most must have summoned it back from the waves again and kept it safe. Which would explain why she’d found it amongst Medea’s things. Rose gently rolled the scroll back up, imagining the sorceress, different back then, lovestruck and sentimental, retrieving it from the sea to keep as a memento of meeting her husband.

The fact that it stopped short of a full account hardly mattered. Not now that she had her answer. Medea had definitely been different back then. Kind and brave, she’d protected Jason from the bulls and saved his life from the bone men. She’d even collected the Fleece for him.

All of which meant that yes, you could be a sorceress
and still have a heart. Rose felt her mood lighten, reminding herself that all the bad things Medea had done had happened much later. Maybe the way Jason treated the sorceress had twisted her out of shape? Maybe it took centuries of using magic to make someone wicked? Or maybe there was something else, something darker still, which had changed the way Medea’s magic worked?

But whatever it was, Rose knew that she absolutely wouldn’t let it happen to her and, tucking the scroll-journal safely back into her shorts pocket, she promised herself that she would never
ever
let her magic hurt anyone.

Starting with Wat.

Her fingers brushed against the flask of her Reversal Potion and, buttoning her pocket, she looked out into the dark thickening of trees.

She just had to find him first.

XXII

T
HE
R
AMMIE
D
ODGER

Extinguished,
thought Aries gloomily.

Was there a sadder, more dreadful word in the whole of the Greek language? He fluttered his eyelids open to a foggy blur of green, certain that he was fading from the world. Damp crept up one of his hocks and, waggling it, he sighed, knowing that the suck of eternal nothingness had already begun wrapping itself about it like a wet sock.

He watched woozily as something glided past. Or was it someone? He couldn’t be sure because his vision was as fuzzy as staring through a pair of Vaseline-smeared spectacles, and he peered harder. Yes, it was definitely some
one
, a rather short someone, wearing what appeared to be a bonnet of yellow flowers. Which struck him as odd. After all, extinguishing was meant to be about vanishing without trace. There wasn’t supposed to be anyone else around, and certainly nobody in a mad-looking hat.

His nostrils twitched, then flared and, gradually aware of a delicious smell, they began flapping like frilly sea slugs in a spring tide. Was someone chopping up fresh
figs? That absolutely couldn’t be right either. His mouth watering, he took another tantalising sniff and wondered if the old Greek thinkers had got it all wrong after all. Perhaps extinguishing wasn’t the way they had imagined, and you weren’t snuffed out like a candle, but instead remained in some limbo-land, with scrummy snacks and dressing-up competitions?

For a moment it didn’t seem quite so bad.

Until he remembered that there would be no Alex.

The thought hit him like a mallet and was so bleak, so stark and so appallingly dreadful that his appetite vanished in an instant (yes, it was
that
bad) and he thumped his head down in despair.

‘Come then, cold doom,’ he muttered bitterly. ‘Sound the final trumpets!’

‘Crumpetsss?’ muttered a familiar voice. ‘Yesss, pleas-s-se!’

Aries gasped as a tawny scaled face loomed above him.

‘Can I have mos-s-squito jam on mine?’

‘Cobra?’ Aries gingerly lifted his head as the snake’s face came into focus.

What was he doing here? And why was rain bouncing off his hood? And, now that he thought of it, why wasn’t it bouncing off his own?

Quickly glancing over his shoulder, he realised it was because he was under a leafy shelter. Moreover, it was responsible for the murky green light, not the emerald fug of extinguishing at all. Although whoever had
constructed it hadn’t made a very good job of it, and a great gaping hole was letting in the water and soaking his foot. But before he could ask any himself any more muddling questions there was a deafening yell.

‘Aries!’

Delighted by the voice, he jerked his head up, overjoyed to see Alex flinging down a handful of figs and scrambling towards him in the sleeting rain.

‘You’re awake!’ exclaimed Alex, throwing his arms around the ram’s neck. ‘How do you feel?’ he went on, now hugging Aries so tightly that he couldn’t muster a reply. ‘Only I was so worried. I thought, I thought …’ He drew back as his voice grew wobbly and looked into Aries’ face. ‘Well, I’m just so glad you’re all right!’

Aries beamed back. He’d never been so glad to see Alex in his entire death. Rubbing his muzzle against the boy’s shoulder he felt a mixture of delight and relief swirl through his muddled mind, making his aching limbs twitch, eager to clamber up and get on with the quest. He wasn’t extinguished. He wasn’t lost. Sure, he had a terrible headache, there was something wonky about his left horn and his side hurt every time he breathed or moved or even thought about breathing or moving, but he was still here!

And so was Alex!

When they finally drew apart, Aries saw that the other Serpents of Wisdom had gathered around. Grass Snake bobbed from side to side at the end of the scaly line-up, his little face lost in the bunch of yellow flowers
he clasped in his mouth. The hatted-figure in the mist, realised Aries, smiling at his own silliness, fleetingly wondering why Jason wasn’t there too.

Now, jerkily, snatches of a darker memory drifted into his mind. Each like a patch of picture from a scattered jigsaw puzzle – a flash of amber fur, six blazing red eyes, a paw like a razor-edged punch bag – made his heart beat harder against his ribs. He looked up into Alex’s concerned face, feeling a trickle of cold fear dribble into his stomachs as he began to remember what had happened to him. Suddenly the memories clicked together as one and he jumped, gasping as the terrifying three-headed cat pounced back into his mind so vividly that he could almost smell its terrible stench again.

He snorted in alarm, shuddering. Instantly Alex laid a hand on his flank.

‘It’s over now,’ he soothed, meeting Aries’ fearful stare.

Viper stuck his head up over Alex’s shoulder. ‘Becaus-s-s-e Alex killed him!’ he announced proudly.

Aries turned to look at the boy properly. ‘Killed him?’ he said, filled with awe.

‘I used the thunderbolt,’ shrugged Alex. ‘And Artemis’s arrows.’ He paused and pushed his heel into the wet sand, making a shallow trench. ‘I’m only sorry I didn’t put him down sooner. Before he could hurt you so badly.’

‘Rubbis-s-sh!’ insisted Viper. ‘You were fabulousss!’

‘Like Achillesss!’ said Adder. ‘You s-s-should be proud of yours-s-self!’

But, thought Aries, Alex didn’t look fabulous or proud. Instead, he looked exhausted. His muddy face was lined with tear marks, palely scored down his cheeks, and he looked worried. Now, despite the boy’s embarrassed grin as the snakes continued to compliment him, Aries could tell that there was something badly wrong, something that was upsetting Alex just as much as what had happened to him.

‘What is it?’ he said.

Alex turned to him, his eyes clouded.

‘Aries, I’m sorry,’ he said, running his hand through his hair.

Aries continued to stare, waiting for him to go on.

‘I was so wrong about Jason. I should have listened to you.’

‘Jason?’ Aries glanced around again, looking for the Argonaut.

‘He’sss gone!’ exclaimed Adder, his large eyes glittering in outraged dismay. ‘He ran away and left usss!’

Aries suddenly felt woozy in a way that had nothing to do with his earlier concussion. Jason had finally shown everyone who he truly was? Meaning he’d never have to protest or argue with Alex about him ever again? He paused, waiting for the surge of triumph, the victory flutter in his stomachs, the marching band of ‘I told you so!’ tramping through his mind, setting off firecrackers of glee the way he’d always imagined it, every time he’d let himself hope for this moment.

Except that he wasn’t feeling any of it.

No surge. No flutter. No marching band. No glee.

Instead all he could think about was how defeated and miserable Alex looked. Listening as the boy went on – ‘
all those times you told me … I should have believed you … I was so stupid’
– and despite knowing that he would never again have to protest until his hooves ached that Jason was a big, cowardly, steaming fraud, his mind turned to how Alex must have felt when Jason fled, how his world must have tilted and all his certainties slid. Yet Alex had summoned up every scrap of courage he had, to run headlong into the fight against that terrible creature to save him, despite the odds. He thought of the worry he must have felt tending Aries’ wounds, nursing him, sitting up with him through the long dark hours, uncertain that he would even recover, and understood one surprising thing: that sometimes being proved right wasn’t much fun at all.

‘Can you forgive me?’ said Alex finally.

Aries rolled on to his stomach and stretched out his front legs like a bald and rather wobbly
Sphinx
, the Greek monster with the body of a lion and a woman’s head. A right old know-all, each morning she fixed him with her indigo eyes when he took in her breakfast at the Zoo, challenging him to a new riddle. Not that he ever had a clue about the answers and nowadays had simply taken to answering ‘haddock’ to every question. But he dearly wished he had her cleverness now because then he’d know exactly what to say to make everything right. He sighed. Love for the boy, hatred for Jason, a
sense of losing the frustration that had dragged about him all of these years tumbled in his mind. But you see, rams aren’t known for their big words and flowery phrases and so all of those thoughts and feelings stayed tied up in a great muddled knot in his brain, and instead he just looked at Alex and nudged him with his horns. And you know, sometimes that can be every bit as profound as a poem or a speech, particularly when it’s between best friends, and seeing Alex’s brown eyes brighten, Aries knew that the boy understood.

‘Well then,’ said Gorgon, yawning loudly. ‘I’m hungry.’ She looked from Aries to Alex, her eyes twinkling a mischievous rusty-gold. ‘Maybe now that you two have quite finished with your love-in, we could have some breakfast and get going?’