Fleeced (12 page)

Suddenly, with a loud splintering crack the stack of shelves collapsed and Aries shot forwards, knocking Rose off her feet. Parcels and crates cascaded to the floor around her.

Alex dragged Rose to her feet. “We need to find somewhere dark to hide. Harpies can’t see well in poor light!”

Behind them, the harpy was blinking and rising to her feet. Rose lunged out into the corridor,
Alex and Aries at her heels, and hurtled towards the stairwell at the end. Throwing back the door, she glanced over her shoulder, glimpsing a scrawny yellow leg stepping out of the storeroom and threw herself up the metal stairs, followed by the other two.

Almost scrambling on all fours in her haste, she skidded out behind them into the empty Great Hall. A second later the stairwell door crashed open behind them. An ear-popping caw filled the room followed by a ferocious flapping of wings as the harpy lifted into the air, her silhouette black against the blue-grey of the glass roof.

“This way!” shouted Alex, noticing the dingy light bathing the Glories of Ancient Egypt exhibition room. “Hide!”

With her breath scouring her lungs, Rose sped into the room, hurtling past the mummies standing either side of the doorway and down the walkway made by two rows of tomb statues, several metres high. Giant stone cats in cobra headdresses gazed impassively down as the children and Aries raced past towards the colossal statue of Aken-Ra, Lord of the Locusts, placed at the top of the rows. Chiselled from sandstone and standing over five metres high, Aken-Ra leaned forwards, his huge hands resting
on great golden knees and, desperate, Rose tucked herself behind his calves, flattening herself against the timeworn stone as Aries hunched down behind his heel. Skidding to a stop, Alex checked to see where they were hiding, before leaping behind the nearby statue of Aken-Ra’s favourite pet locust, golden and leggy and over two metres high.

Rose breathed through her mouth and listened to the wet snuffling and sort of
scritchy-scratchy
sound that talons make against a marble floor. Edging her nose around the side of Aken-Ra’s leg she peered out to see the harpy strutting towards them, jerking her head between the statues to check if anyone was hiding.

Drawing back, Rose lay her head against the cool stone. Which was when she spotted the display of tomb candle lighters arranged a couple of metres away on the wall. Taking a deep breath she leaped out, sprinted the short distance and snatched one up, actually a third century bc tomb candle lighter of the Amenhotep dynasty (which to those
non-archaeologists
amongst you is a big pole with a sharp tip at one end).

“Come on, you great overgrown crow!” squealed Rose, running towards the harpy, jabbing the pole in the air.

“Rose, no!” yelled Alex, leaping from his hiding place as Rose thrust and jabbed, striking high, low, left, right.

But wherever she aimed, the candle lighter bounced off the harpy’s chest like a pin against a car tyre and now, cawing wildly, the ferocious
bird-woman
began lifting off the ground.

“Get away from her talons!” yelled Alex, throwing himself towards the harpy, reaching out for her slimy tail feathers and just missing as she swept up into the air, snatched the hood of Rose’s top and yanked the girl off balance.

Behind him Aries thundered across the room, charging towards the harpy who was now flying a metre off the ground, dragging Rose backwards. Rose struggled and punched, her trainers squealing wildly over the floor as the harpy suddenly shot upwards, just missing Aries’ horns, and carried Rose into the air, up over the tomb statues, towards the ceiling, tight in her talons.

Aries brayed furiously as Alex spun round, seized the nearest relic, a priceless tomb ornament of Neferhotep I (valued for its high craftsmanship and unusual use of two tones of marble) and clambered onto the locust statue for a better shot. Harpies, he knew, hunted by snatching turtles from the seashore,
flying higher and higher up into the sky in order to drop them onto the rocks below, so that they’d, well, you get the picture. Horrified, he understood that the harpy intended to dispatch Rose in exactly the same way. He tried to straighten up, cursing as his feet slid over the statue’s stonework, worn smooth by centuries in the desert, and realised he was too far away to make the shot.

“Aries!” he yelled. “Come here!”

The ram pounded across and skidded to a halt as Alex leaped from the statue onto his broad back. Spreading his feet for balance, teetering like a circus acrobat, Alex fixed his aim on the harpy as Aries clattered across the floor beneath her.

“Take that!” he shouted, hurling the urn with all his strength.

It whirled through the air and struck the side of the creature’s head. Her wings jerked and collapsed, sending her toppling backwards, reeling tail over shoulder feathers as Rose vanished into a blur of black. The harpy fell, fluttering and whistling, and crashed into a heap on the floor.

Leaping down from Aries’ back, Alex ran across the floor. A small hand poked out through the slimy tangle and grabbing it he pulled Rose free and dragged her to her feet.

“You all right?” he said.

“Soft landing,” said Rose, wiping a smear of grease from her cheek. “That was some shot!”

Alex shrugged and looked down at the stunned creature. “Feels funny to be attacking something that I usually look after,” he said. “But then, it was her or us.”

Aries prodded a hoof into the harpy’s side and she began to twitch and mutter.

“Come on,” said Alex, “we have to get out of here.”

Minutes later they hurried down the front steps of the British Museum, over its courtyard and out onto Great Russell Street. Alex gasped, covering his ears against the sudden thrum of traffic, and blinked, astonished by the cars and red buses rumbling past and hooting horns. Beside him, Aries buried his head in Alex’s stomach (although when you’re the size of an upright piano, any burying of heads is more hopeful than helpful, so that as well as being terrified, Alex was now buckled into a very uncomfortable right angle over Aries’ back).

“It’s all right,” soothed Rose, knowing that traffic was every bit as alien to Alex and Aries as that creature in the museum had been to her.

Taking hold of Alex’s sleeve and Aries’ left horn, she wove through people – who pointed and clicked
Aries with their phone cameras – into a back street. One of a patchwork of lanes that zigzagged quietly towards Rose’s home, today it felt safe, hidden from the London of postcards and plastic flags that she’d always felt at home in before, a London that had suddenly filled with wings and talons and danger.

XIV

S
CROLL ON A
R
OLL

An hour later, Alex and Aries were sitting at the table in Dr Pottersby-Weir’s cramped kitchen waiting for Rose to come back from the Royal Geographical Society. Only the day before Alex would never have let the Scroll, tattered and useless as it was, out of his sight and particularly in the care of a girl. After all, it was their only divine help up here. But sometimes in life there are situations that convince you to trust people quickly and someone helping you defeat a harpy in the British Museum is one of those situations.

Alex knew that Rose wasn’t like any girl he’d met in ancient Athens but more like the Spartan girls he’d heard of, brought up to be strong and athletic, to ride horses and chariots. He’d been impressed at how she’d stood up to the harpy, even if she hadn’t really known how to do it, but more than that, he’d been touched – touched that she’d helped them.
After all, Hades only knew how fantastic their story must have seemed to an Earth girl and so, when she’d suggested she take the Scroll away to fix, he’d agreed immediately, happy to follow her instructions not to leave the house or answer the telephone. Of course, since neither Alex nor Aries knew what a telephone was, that was hardly a problem.

The sound of the front door opening shook Alex from his thoughts.

“Did it!” called Rose, stepping into the hall.

She pushed back her hood and hurried into the kitchen, grinning and holding the Scroll up triumphantly in front of her.

Now, since Rose wasn’t the sort to blow her own trumpet
19
, allow me to tell you that she’d done a wonderful job. Really. Of course, she’d always been pretty good at fiddly things, like holding Brazilian lizard dung between tweezers for her mother to examine, but this time she’d excelled herself. Having charmed her way into the building – not hard, since most of the people who worked there
still remembered her father – she’d nipped into the map lab during coffee break and used the machine to patch the Scroll’s holes so neatly they all but vanished.

So, let me say it again:

Well done, Rose!

Which was what Alex said, too, as he set down his mug and unfurled the Scroll, only he didn’t sound nearly as excited as me. In fact, he sounded subdued and rather nervous. Quite apart from all the strange people and things he’d seen since arriving, he’d been thinking about being attacked by a harpy, and he’d just reached a very unpleasant conclusion, which we’ll come to in a moment.

Brace yourselves.

“It was easy really,” said Rose, trying to sound cheerful despite their anxious faces. She sat down beside them at the table. “The machine calculated that the Scroll dates from around 440
BC
and told me where to find the parchment to repair it with. I used some stuff unearthed at Corinth years ago, fed it into the machine and it made all the right pieces.” She touched the scratch on her cheek. “So I suppose we can ask it who sent that bird thing to the museum?”

“We don’t need to,” said Alex, biting his lip. “Only Medea is powerful enough to create a
harpy up here on Earth.”

“But why?” Aries dropped the breakfast bowl he’d been tipping towards him to finish off his tea. It clattered in the stillness. “Why’s she sticking her big nose in?”

“It wasn’t big,” said Alex, “not in the wedding portraits they sent me to paint on the commemorative pots.”

“Perhaps she’s still got it,” muttered Rose, thinking out loud.

“Got what?” said Aries. “Her nose?”

“No,” said Rose. “The fleece.” She turned to face the other two. “Think about it,” Rose went on slowly. “Didn’t you say that neither she nor the fleece came down to the Underworld—”

“That doesn’t mean she still has it, though,” said Alex. “Not when it’s been more than a thousand years since she helped steal it.”

“But why else send a harpy after us?” said Rose. “Unless she’s scared that we’ll take the fleece away from her?”

“Scared?” Alex suppressed a nervous laugh. “You think Medea would be scared of a couple of kids and a ram?”

There was a mumble from the direction of top of the table.

“And a Scroll,” added Rose quickly. She turned to look at the roll of paper, flipping its corner sulkily. “Perhaps we should be asking it questions instead of sitting here puzzling our heads off! We’ve still got three left.”

At which point the Scroll unfurled with a shimmy.

Twisting round, it shot a teaspoon onto the floor and flipped open and shut excitedly. “What’s the question?”

Alex took a deep breath. “Scroll, we want to know, does Medea still have the fleece?”

The Scroll remained silent.

“Please?” added Rose.

“Thank you, Rose,” muttered the Scroll. “How nice to find someone with good manners.”

It huffed and rolled out taut.

Aries frowned. “Alex, is it saying yes or no?”

Alex watched as the Scroll tweaked its corners up into a papery smile.

“It’s a yes, I think,” translated Alex.

“I knew it,” said Aries, clattering the stone floor with his hooves. “That’s why she’s scared of us. She knows we’re coming to—”

At which the Scroll snapped shut. “And a no,” added Alex. “Probably.”

“Make your mind up!” spluttered Aries.

Rose reached out a hand and stroked the Scroll. “I think it’s telling us that it’s a yes and a no.”

“Yes, she’s still got it,” said Aries. “But I wonder what it meant by the no?”

For a few moments, everyone thought while the Scroll purred contentedly against Rose’s hand.

“What about ‘her power’s in the stitches’?” said Rose.

But no one had any ideas about that either.

“Swapping wands for needles?” Rose persisted.

Or that.

Scrolls, decided Rose, even repaired ones, were nowhere near as useful as the internet. You couldn’t just type in your search word and wait for a clear answer to flash up.

The Scroll rustled impatiently. “Do you have another question?”

“Hardly,” muttered Aries sourly. “Not when you’ve already been so helpful!”

“I’m sorry,” the Scroll replied. “But I may give you only the answers which I distil from the psychic vibrations around me.”

“I’ll give you psychic vibrations!” muttered Aries. He looked up at Alex. “What should we ask now?”

Alex swallowed. “The only thing we can ask. Scroll,” he said. “Please will you tell us where to find Medea?”

Well, whilst they’re waiting for the Scroll to tell them, I can tell you precisely where Medea was: sitting in a ruby wing-backed armchair in the living room of her London house, scowling. And as scowls go, it was an especially vile one, a real face-crumpler, compounded of annoyance at Ms De Mentor, who now trembled in front of the sorceress, and of
the sickening stench that seeped up through the room’s floorboards from the cellar below. Despite the bowls of fresh lilies Medea set around the room and the flickering sandalwood candles, nothing ever masked that putrid smell.

And what, you might ask, was down there making such a stink?

Well, ask away, because I’m not saying anything about
that
place until I really have to.

Medea stood up and fixed the harpy with her pale silver eyes. “I can’t believe you failed to bring me the ram.”

Hex, who’d been snoozing on the back of her chair, now opened one sleepy eye to see the sorceress pluck a black rose from the vase on the mantlepiece and slap it against her palm, sending showers of velvety petals to the floor.

“Well?” Medea turned back to the harpy who sank her scraggy neck low into her chest. “Do you have an explanation?”

“Mistress, I didn’t expect the ram to have such help—”

“Help?” Medea’s voice rose. “You’re talking about children!”

“Yes,” the harpy went on nervously. “But the boy was so protective of the ram and the girl, and she,
well, she was so determined. And resourceful.”

Medea raised an eyebrow. “Really?” She thought for a moment and regarded the harpy darkly. “How old was she?”

The harpy shrugged. “About twelve.”

Hex noticed the dark smile cross Medea’s face. “Ussseful, Mistressss?”

“Perhaps,” said Medea in a voice that sounded like ice cracking under water.

“And I found out something else,” added Ms De Mentor quickly. “She told me her mother works at the museum. A Dr Pottersby-Weir.”

Medea frowned and walked across the room to check the morning’s newspaper and flicked through the pages until she found what she wanted. “Dr Augusta Pottersby-Weir… Here we are,” she said, reading over the article with fresh relish. “She’s the woman who’s going to fix the caryatid. Due to fly out to Greece this morning.”

The harpy lifted her chin brightly and began preening one foot with the other, even though she was wearing boots again. “Is that useful, too, Mistress?”

Medea shrugged dismissively. “It hardly makes up for your failure,” she muttered. “But you won’t let me down again.”

“No, Mistress,” said the harpy, making a
half-bow
. “I promise I—”

“No,” Medea cut her off. “You misunderstand me.”

Raising one arm above her head, she whispered something under her breath and twisted round in three full circles, whereupon a flash of red light shot from her fingers, bounced off the ceiling and pierced the harpy’s chest like a thrown spear.

“Mistr—?” The harpy gurgled and slumped to the floor, her eyes black circles of pain.

“Ooh,” said Hex in the twitchy silence that now filled the living room. “Don’t you think that was a bit harsssh?”

Medea glared at him. “Do you want to be next?”

Snapping his head back faster than a party blower
20
, Hex ducked behind the chair and laced himself tightly against its carved fretwork as Medea swept past. She stooped to pick up the black smouldering dragon’s tooth from the rug where the harpy had stood and slipped it into her pocket.

For a moment she stared into the cold embers of the fireplace. Then, closing her eyes, she whispered a name under her breath. A moment later the door
behind her opened and someone, or rather something, tall, broad-shouldered and immaculately dressed in one of Medea’s suits for gentlemen, clopped inside. Clopped because although the creature’s head and torso were those of a man, his hind quarters and legs were those of a goat: bowed, furry beneath those pressed trousers and ending in polished brown hooves.

The creature was a faun, the second of those Medea had created in Regent’s Park the night before. Now, stepping into the sunlight streaming through the window, his black hair, smooth as gloss paint, twinkled almost blue. A microphone headset curled neatly around one ear. Beautifully groomed, he might have passed for one of Medea’s own fashion models, save for the two horns that poked through his hair.

“Pandemic,” said Medea.

“At your service, Mistress.” The faun bowed and straightened up, smiling, making his face crease into lines around his deep brown eyes. “I assure you your problems are at an end.”

“You’ll bring the ram to me?” said Medea.

“Without fail, Mistress.”

Opening one beautifully manicured hand, he revealed a set of panpipes, their long reeds glinting in the firelight. “The old ways still work,” he smiled.

At which Hex slithered over the back of the chair and onto its seat for a better look.

“Don’t you think he’s a bit weedy?” he muttered, looking the faun up and down.

The faun raised an eyebrow. “I think you mean svelte.”

“No.” Hex regarded him, hissing. “Definitely weedy.”

“Which is why I’ve created reinforcements,” said Medea.

“Reinforcements?” said Pandemic, his voice rising peevishly as a second figure shuffled out from behind him.

Thickset and lumpen, he looked rather like a gorilla bundled into a dinner suit
21
. It stared back at the faun with a single watery green eye, set squarely in the centre of its lumpy forehead.

“Dear Fred!” Medea brushed a fleck of soil from the creature’s jacket.

Pandemic wrinkled up his nose, disgusted, as Fred began flexing his muscles, making them squirm like octopus tentacles beneath his sleeves whilst his knuckles crunched like pistachio shells.

“Not bad,” she murmured, smiling.

Now some of you might be wondering why Medea had created such odd-looking helpers.

Why not employ a vindictive vet?

Or a sheep wrestler?

Well, think for a moment about who are sheep’s worst enemies. Yes, I do know I sound like a teacher, but go on, humour me.