Rampage! (2 page)

I

J
UNGLE
B
ELLES

Well, that’s quite enough of that.

Medea is most definitely not my favourite person and, to be honest, I’d rather not talk about her any more, nor murder, man-eaters or mayhem for that matter. To be honest, there’s far too much of that in the rest of this book and I’ve only just recovered from our last little excursion in the summer. But it hasn’t escaped my hawk-like skills of observation that masses of mean words all start with the letter ‘M’. Like murk and menace and mischief and malevolent. (And,
quelle surprise
, as they say in
la belle France
, the name of a certain personage.)

So, excuse me, but I’m going to leave the misfortunes
5
of that miserable
6
underground mooch-hole
7
to tell you about something a lot more exhilarating, which is what Rose was doing a couple of weeks later.

Rose was flying high above the Amazon rainforest,
gazing out of the plane window, astonished at the vast sprawl of jungle beneath her. Down below the whirring propellers of the plane’s pink-tipped wings, ancient teak trees, taller than tower blocks, thrust their branches into the sky. Neighbouring Brazil-nut trees snagged wisps of mist that floated about their crowns of frothy yellow flowers as, blinking, she tried to take in quite how enormously, overwhelmingly gigantic they were. Yet nothing her mother had told her – and what with her mother being an archaeologist who specialised in Amazonia, that had been
plenty
– had prepared her for the sheer spectacle of the rainforest. Pressing her face up against the sun-warmed glass of the window, she gazed further down their teetering trunks at the canopy, the swell of leaves and vines that lapped about them like an emerald ocean. As she peered, eager to glimpse a troupe of monkeys bouncing over the branches or a toucan circling in the warm air, her mother’s voice floated back into her mind. Did she know that the Amazon was the biggest river on Earth? Or that its rainforest helped the Earth breathe? That quinine, the drug that cured malaria, grew in the bark of its trees? That mining, oil drilling and ranching ripped it to pieces every day, ruining great swathes of the forest that could never be replaced?

No, no, no and no.

Rose bit her lip, thinking guiltily back to those last awkward moments at the airport, wishing again that she’d been able to tell her mother the truth about this
trip. But even though she’d always hated lying, despised it so much that it actually made her stomach hurt, she absolutely couldn’t. What? Tell
her
mother that she’d been given the coordinates of Rose’s missing father, by a magical All-Knowing Scroll? Confess that she intended to head deep into the eastern Brazilian rainforest to find him, even though search parties had given up six months ago, based on the help that a couple of Greek ghosts had given her? Her mother would have gone horribly pale, whipped Rose’s suitcase back from the airport check-in desk and dragged her to some sort of specialist the same morning.

Rose sighed.

If only her mother was like other girls’ mothers. The sort who believed what their daughters told them. And noticed them occasionally, instead of dragging them endlessly from one city to the next and one school to the next, whilst switching jobs from one famous museum to the next, elbow-deep in the relics of old Amazon tribes, trying to accept that they’d never see their husband again.

Rose shook her head. She knew she was being unfair. After all, her mother only did it to distract herself from her own grief.

Still, as she now reminded herself, trying to soothe her conscience, it was hardly her fault that she’d been forced, yes, that was it,
forced
, to pretend the trip was simply a thank-you from Hazel, for helping to save the pop star’s life, in what the newspapers reported as
‘a terrible theatre accident’. She bit a fingernail. That bit was nearly true, at least. The trip
was
a thank you, even if the accident at the theatre had been nothing to do with sloppy stage dressing and everything to do with the whim of a vicious bloodthirsty sorceress.

Rose shivered.

Despite the sunshine streaming in through the aircraft window, thinking of the sorceress made her skin prickle icily. She reached for the gold locket around her neck and rubbing its familiar oval smoothness, took a long, deep breath. A present from her parents for her eleventh birthday, it was now the most special thing she owned, because it had been only a few months later that her father had vanished on his expedition.

Twisting the locket between her fingers, she wondered for about the millionth time since the Scroll had given her its answer how her father would be when she found him. After all, the Scroll had told her that he was alive, hadn’t it? So what had stopped him, or any of the others, from coming home? Or making contact? Her mind returned to the day the expedition left, hearing the men’s shouted goodbyes as they boarded the plane at Heathrow, all khaki trousers and smiles, intent on finding the site of the village of some old Amazonian tribe, one whose legendary chieftain had dusted his skin with gold and danced in the moonlight, and pondered, yet again, what could possibly have gone wrong.

(Me, I’d already be thinking about those monstrous jungle spiders, big enough to throttle a finch, or merciless anacondas, ready to wrap round you like a taco and squeeze you till you’re human guacamole.
8
)

Sighing, she turned her attention to the stands of towering trees rocketing out of the endless canopy like flagpoles topping a ginormous circus tent. Pushing her forehead against the window, she stared at the swathe of leaves, knowing that he was down there somewhere, hidden far below, in the shadowy world beneath them. She would find him, she told herself,
she would
, and then they’d be a proper family again.

A sudden explosion of red, blue and gold from the treetops made her jump, as a flock of macaws burst screeching into the air.

‘Did you see that?’ gasped Rose, now bolt upright in her seat, blinking as the birds swirled and squawked in wide noisy circles.

She turned to Hazel, the only other passenger in the private cabin, who was seated across an expanse of pink carpet in a raspberry-coloured squishy chair. The young pop star was wearing pink cotton trousers and a pink T-shirt with a pink eye-mask snapped firmly over her eyes, her blonde ponytail swishing from side to side as she bobbed to the music playing through her earphones. And yes, they were pink, too.

‘Haze?’

Rose watched as Hazel reached absently into the basket beside her seat for yet another bottle of French spring water (specially imported for the flight) and held it out like a microphone out in front of her, miming the words and blowing kisses to her fans. Punching one hand in the air, she kicked out a spangly pink sneaker. ‘Got to see me, baby!’ she trilled.

Rose giggled, hardly able to believe that it was only a few weeks ago that she had met Hazel Praline –
the
Hazel Praline – and now they were actually friends. Sinking back into her seat, she was still faintly amazed that she, boring old Rose from Camden, was travelling with Hazel Praline in the megastar’s private plane. Hazel Praline whose posters were tacked all over the wall of her bedroom, whose Saturday morning TV show, in which Hazel played a fearless horse rider rounding up cattle between bursting into song, Rose watched every weekend, whose concert she’d been so desperate to attend. And who now – even if it had felt like forever rather than a few weeks to Rose as she waited for Hazel to finish all her London interviews and film publicity and blah blah blah – had personally brought her out to the jungle.

But then, there had been so many unbelievable things this summer.

Like meeting Alex and Aries. At first she’d hardly even believed that they were ghosts. And small wonder since Ancient Greek ghosts, as some of you already know, 
look just as solid as you and me.
9
Now she felt her heart lurch, wishing they were with her and, stifling a snort of laughter, she imagined Aries uncomfortably buckled into one of the squishy seats, hooves in the air, complaining loudly, and Alex hopelessly trying to cheer him up. She’d never known anyone like them, so totally brave and funny and loyal. She wondered if they’d had the heroes’ welcome they’d talked about when they returned to the Greek Underworld. It was funny really, she reflected, because before meeting them she’d only ever thought of Greek heroes as muscle-bound and brimming with confidence. Not a boy and a ram as bald as a pickled onion.

‘My stomach!’ squealed Hazel, jolting Rose from her thoughts as the plane dropped abruptly.

Snapping off her eye-mask, the young star blinked in the sunlight as the tannoy crackled into life and the pilot’s voice crooned across the stylish deck.

‘Good afternoon, ladies! In a few minutes we will be starting our descent into Barcelos Airport. Buckle up!’

‘We finally there?’ muttered Hazel, reaching for the giant sunhat on the seat beside her. ‘I’m gonna fix us some watermelon coolers when we arrive!’

‘Sounds good,’ said Rose, clicking her seat belt together,
freshly glad that Hazel was with her for company. She’d been such huge fun back in London.

Rose looked out, feeling her stomach loop the loop, as gaps opened up in the jungle through which the broad Rio Negro, its water black as liquorice, twisted and writhed. The town of Barcelos seemed little more than a cluster of whitewashed buildings nestled into a long curve of dark water and, closer now, catching her breath, she could make out houses with grey corrugated iron roofs, criss-crossed by narrow palm-lined roads. A blue bus rumbled sluggishly past a schoolyard filled with playing children.

‘Here we go!’ trilled Hazel, as the plane’s tone changed, and it turned towards the runway. Catching sight of Rose’s face, she smiled broadly. ‘Won’t be long now, Rose. We’ll find him. You’ll see!’

Rose stared down, watching as the plane flew over a row of grander waterfront buildings, dominated by a church, its big blue doors propped open at the top of a flight of steps that ran down to the river. Red fishing boats bobbed against the bank. A four-tiered river cruiser gleamed at the end of a whitewood jetty.

Now for those non-Brazilian geographers amongst you, Barcelos is a long way north-west of the coordinates the Scroll had given Rose, but Hazel had insisted they fly here, rather than Manaus which was closer, because Manaus was also the biggest, hippest, city in the jungle and bound to be
a-brimmin’ with fans a-circling her like flies in the Texan heat
. Besides, she’d pointed out, after
everything that’d happened to them in London, wouldn’t Rose prefer a relaxing river cruise, too? Rose, as you might have imagined, wouldn’t. She’d hated the thought of leaving her father a second longer in the jungle than she had to, but had bit back her impatience. After all, as she’d had to remind herself, it was completely amazing that Hazel was taking her at all.

As the plane lurched again, Rose spotted the runway, little more than a thin strip of tarmac, and a few seconds later the plane bounced down in a squeal of hot rubber tyres and rumbled to a stop.

‘C’mon!’ cried Hazel, dragging an overstuffed bag and three hatboxes behind her as the flight-attendant, a slim woman dressed in a neat pink uniform, opened the plane door.

For a moment, Rose stood in the doorway as Hazel clattered down the metal steps. Heat punched her in the chest, bringing with it the mingled smells of pineapple and sun-warmed bananas. Faint shrieks and howls rang out across the runway from the trees encircling the airport perimeter and, stepping out, Rose felt her stomach fill with butterflies. Then, quickly shaking her head, she hoisted her rucksack on to her back and scolded herself silently that whatever lay ahead it couldn’t possibly be as daunting as squaring up to a sorceress and surviving her wrath.

She rolled her eyes.

What was she doing even thinking about Medea? After all, she was thousands of miles away, wasn’t she?
On a different continent, scrubbing floors and buffing boots, doing her community service?

Which unfortunately brings me to yet another of those troublesome ‘M’ words.

Mistaken.

II

C
HISELLED
S
WIZZLE

At that moment, several miles below Rose’s feet, down in the Greek Underworld, Aries, the ghost ram of the Golden Fleece, was snorting at his marble bottom. Now, since a marble bottom is likely to make anyone snort, I’d better explain that the bottom in question actually belonged to his statue. And statues, as we all know, are often made of marble, making a marble bottom perfectly fine and, indeed, much better than, say, having a bottom made of jelly. However, I don’t know why you want to talk about jelly bottoms when I’m trying to tell you about his statue.

Ah, yes.

Truly splendid, the statue was a gift from Athena, the goddess of wisdom, who always rewarded Greeks returning from a quest with a prize. Gleaming creamy-white, it stood on a lawn in the Underworld Zoo, home to the ghosts of all the Greek monsters. The life-sized figure captured Aries perfectly, showing him in a furious battle charge. Its broad back reared upwards, its massive shoulders braced tightly, its front hooves hovered above the ground, as though he was poised to hurtle forwards.
Two glorious gold-dusted horns – horns that had taken the sculptor days of tippy-tapping until they curled precisely like Aries’ own and were quite as twirly as Danish pastries – tilted forwards ready to butt anything, or anyone, out of his path.

Not that Aries was in the mood to admire any of that today.

No, because at that moment his attention was fixed on the crude wooden target that had mysteriously appeared on the statue’s derriere and from which three arrows jutted.

‘He’s done it again!’ he fumed, recognising Jason’s latest attack.

The day before yesterday, he’d found his statue wearing a wide-brimmed straw hat. Last week, a black curly moustache had appeared painted beneath its magnificent muzzle. A moustache, Aries scowled, that had taken Hex, Medea’s ex-familiar black mamba, two days of rubbing (and grumbling) to polish clean.

Now, staring at the offending arrows, he felt his brain start to simmer furiously.

Wasn’t it enough that the leopard-skinned twerp had stolen the Fleece all those years ago? Leaving him, Aries the noble ram of legend, doomed to an eternity of bald ghosthood in the Underworld? Not to mention his being stupid enough to let Medea get her icy-white fingers on his golden coat for her cruel magic? Clearly not, because even now Jason insisted on treating Aries like some big, silly, walking joke. A joke that everyone else always found
hugely amusing. Aries snorted furiously. If only they knew the truth about their so-called hero. What if, like him, the dancing girls had actually been in the forest that night and seen Jason’s knees knocking whilst Medea sorted out all the scary bits? The dancers wouldn’t be as pink and giggly then, he was sure. And would Athena still be simpering around him, cupping her face in wonder as she listened to his bragging? Hardly. His flanks began quivering with rage at the unfairness of it all, certain that things would be very different down here if they’d seen what had truly happened for themselves. And sighed. In the Underworld, people lapped up the story of a handsome hero over a bald ram every time.

He glared at the arrows and harrumphed bitterly. Just imagining Jason’s ridiculous grin as he’d fired those despicable arrows sent a shudder down his spiralling horns, the sort of shudder that made them positively itch to butt the swaggering hero into the nearest pile of steaming
Minotaur
doo. For years Jason had picked on him, and it had become ten times worse since the ram had come back from London.

Rearing up, Aries threw his shoulders into the air and paddled his hooves over the grass, for a moment perfectly mimicking the statue in front of him.

Which was when he heard a familiar voice.

‘Aries! You’ll knock yourself out!’ it yelled.

Sliding his treacly-brown eyes sideways, Aries saw Alex running towards him, tall and rangy, waving his arms wildly in the air, whilst Hex swayed up from the
boy’s shoulders in a silvery question mark. Then, undeterred, he hurled himself forward, galloping towards the statue in a blizzard of dust.

Veering sideways at the last second, Aries seized the edge of the target in his mouth, snapping its rope and with the flourish of an Olympic discus thrower entertaining a cheering crowd, tossed it into the air. Clopping after it, he speared it as it landed. Then, imagining it was Jason, he flung it down onto the ground and stamped on it, smashing the wood and splintering the thin arrow shafts –
crack, crack, crack
– before snatching up the wreckage in order to hurl it into the nearby lake.

Which was when he realised that Alex was now standing right beside him, with his arms folded, sighing loudly.

‘Feel better now?’ he said, picking up one of the broken arrow shafts and tapping its feathers against his palm.

‘Much,’ replied Aries primly, fixing Alex with a stubborn right-eyed stare.

This was because his left eye was now hidden behind a shard of the smashed target, which despite much flinging had remained stuck firmly on his horns and now veiled half of his face like a hat worn at a jaunty angle.

‘You shouldn’t let Jason get to you like this,’ said Alex, stepping forward to pull the wood free.

Aries sighed, wearily disappointed to see that the boy was wearing his ‘zoo-keeper’s face’ again. The same old look he always gave Aries when the ram talked about Jason. Or when he listened to the Minotaur moan
about
Theseus
or the Chimera
10
chunter about Bellerophon.
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That same old mixture of patience and frustration that showed that whilst Alex was truly sorry about what had happened to the monsters, he was truly tired, too, at hearing yet again how fabulous animals hated the Greeks who’d killed them or, in Aries’ case, stolen the Fleece he’d loved most in the world.

‘But don’t you see?’ said Aries, yanking his horn back as Alex pulled off the last shard of target. ‘Jason couldn’t attack it if it was where it should be. In the Heroes’ Pavilion.’ He scuffed a hoof through the dust. ‘With all the others.’

‘The others-s-s?’ hissed Hex. ‘I thought that’d be the las-s-st place you’d want it?’

The others
, as some of you will recall, were the statues of Greece’s most famous heroes. All displayed in the Pavilion, it was Jason and his fifty Argonauts that held pride of place, gracing its grand entrance hall. Standing high on their plinths, majestic and awe-inspiring, they gazed blindly at one another across an expanse of black marble floor, lofty beneath the circlets of laurels that
were placed on their heads each morning after their daily dusting. However, Athena had flatly refused to allow Aries’ statue, celebrating the courage he’d shown back in the summer, to stand with them.

‘You told me,’ hissed the snake, slithering down from Alex’s shoulder to bring his face close to Aries’ left ear, ‘that the Argonauts-s-s were jus-s-st a bunch of braggers-s-s, bullies-s-s and thieves-s-s. And that Jas-s-son des-s-served to be their captain becaus-s-s-e he was-s-s the bigges-s-st fraud of the lot!’

‘He is!’ snapped Aries. ‘His statue should be crunched up into tiny pieces and used for the
Nemean Lion
’s litter tray! But the fact remains that the Pavilion is the place that people expect to see Greek heroes. Not stuck in the zoo, halfway between that lot –’ he glanced over his shoulder at the lake – ‘and that!’ he finished, glaring ominously at a nearby villa-shaped building behind him.

Ah, yes.

Well, there was nothing wrong with the crystal waters of the lake. In fact, it housed the fabulous Pipers of
Poseidon
– one of the more glamorous attractions in the zoo, a band of blue-skinned mermen and women who played a splendid watery symphony on their conch shells every afternoon at three.

No.

The problem was the neighbouring small building. This was because it housed the – how can I put this nicely? – zoo lavatories.

That’s right, public conveniences.

And Aries did have a point. After all, who expects to see statues of heroes within earshot of toilet noises? I mean, imagine if Lord Nelson wasn’t up on his column but down in the square below with his naval nose pressed up against a block of Trafalgar Square loos.

It’s hardly dignified, is it?

Sighing, Aries looked at the plinth of his statue, now scuffed with sandal marks, from where Jason had clambered up.

‘I know it’s hard,’ said Alex, looking into Aries’ eyes, ‘but that’s just the way things are down here. Goddesses will always prefer statues of hunky men to rams in their Pavilion because that’s what heroes look like to them.’ He shrugged, glancing over at the trunk of a nearby oak tree riddled with arrows, and rubbed Aries’ head. ‘And look! He only managed to hit the target three times.’

‘Despite the s-s-size of it,’ added Hex, snapping his tongue back quickly as Aries swung round and fixed him with a hot stare.

Quickly realising his mistake, Hex dropped onto the ground and zigzagged between the ram’s hoofs. Then, snagging a dock leaf on his fang, he slithered up onto the statue’s horns and hung down to busily rub Jason’s sandal scuffs off the marble.

‘The important thing to remember,’ he hissed, glancing up between polishes, ‘is-s-s that
we
know what we did. Unlike Jas-s-son, who you keeping ins-s-sis-s-s-ting didn’t do what he’s-s-s famous-s-s for, we really did s-s-save Ros-s-se and Hazel.’

Aries sank down onto his haunches and stuck out his bottom lip sulkily. It was different for Hex, he decided, his eyes following the snake’s circling snout as he rubbed at the statue again, because escaping from Medea’s clutches had been prize enough.

And Alex?

Of course Aries knew that the boy wouldn’t give a mouldy fig for statues or fame. Or, he sighed, toadying poets who wrote epic poems about quests. Of course flouncy Jason and his wretched crew had a whole book devoted to how they’d snitched the Fleece. Written by
Apollonius
some years after the voyage, from the account given by Jason himself, since the ship’s log had been unfortunately lost overboard on the trip,
The Argonautica
was on the scroll-shelf of every god and goddess, soldier, schoolchild and citizen in the Underworld. Oh yes, Aries groaned inwardly, down here they just couldn’t get enough of his glittering story of bravery and glory.

And what, precisely, did he have?

A statue adorning the zoo toilets whose bottom was used for target practice.

Hooray!

Snuffling, Aries decided to settle down and feel properly sorry for himself.

He snatched a sunlit nettle and began chewing miserably, brooding on the fact that ever since he’d come down to the Underworld he’d been treated as nothing more than a four-legged laughing stock, as bald as a barrel. Even their London quest hadn’t changed the way people
looked at him. Now, lifting his muzzle, he turned to watch Alex, the boy’s glossy black hair flopping over his face as he sliced up bread, setting it out on the long picnic table beside the lake, together with pots of salmon paste and a giant bowl of eel trifle ready for the mer-musicians’ lunch. Aries loved the boy with all his heart, but that only made it even more frustrating that Alex didn’t seem to understand how furious he felt. And, after everything they’d done up on Earth, could the boy really just go back to buttering bread for monsters? To cleaning flotsam from
Charybdis
’s pool? And soothing
Scylla
’s sulks? Aries rolled his eyes. Only yesterday, Alex had spent half the afternoon leaning over the sea-monster’s tank, whispering close to the water to cheer her up. But then again, what could Aries expect when the boy had even used his prize from Athena to buy new things for the
Stymphalian Birds’
aviary? Not to mention installing them himself, struggling with the man-sized ladders and ships’ bells, all the time flinching just far enough away from the tips of the birds’ bronze beaks as they pecked impatiently from behind a makeshift net of iron. And for those of you not bold enough to read my last book, and who might be wondering why Alex should need to be so careful around the monster birds, what with his already being a ghost, let me give you one word:
extinguished
. This is what happens when a Greek ghost is killed a second time and is snuffed out to nothing with little more than a shocked gasp and a cry of, ‘Oooo! What was th––?’

Of course, such good friends might have taken the latest outrage visited on Aries’ statue properly if Aries hadn’t been quite so grumpy or Alex quite so busy.

And certainly if a beetle-black chariot hadn’t at that exact moment appeared, careering along the far side of the lake, thundering towards them, its driver wrestling the reins of two ebony horses.

Aries blinked, recognising the plumes of gold and purple in their brow bands, his heart tightening in alarm at the sight of the chariot belonging to Persephone, the Queen of the Underworld. Jumping to his hooves, he raced over to Alex, feeling his ears quiver as the driver blew three long shrills on a bugle.