Rampage! (30 page)

With a start, Rose noticed the golden eagle lying close by its feet and, darting forwards, snatched it up and hurled it far into the lagoon. Then she tossed in the shields and scattered coins and jewellery too. Out in the water, the caimans stopped fighting over the floating gold and swam quietly away in the darkness.

Roaring in fury, the howler leaped on to its back feet, took one last belligerent look at them and spun away. It lumbered into the rainforest and, hurling itself at the first tree, raced up into the leaves before looping away through the branches, into the night.

‘Who needs statues or Tartarus?’ yelled Alex, throwing his arms around Rose and Wat. Together they jumped up and down, cheering and laughing and gadzooking at the top of their voices.

Seconds later, there was a heavy thrumming of hooves as Aries galloped over the shore towards them, in a blizzard of sprayed mud, and their loud yelps of delight sent the vultures flapping off the trees.

Rose and Alex threw their arms around him and hugged him, too. Even Wat managed a gentlemanly pat on the head or two.

In fact, they were so busy congratulating each other and cheering that no one actually realised that Jason had arrived down from the bluff until he spoke.

‘Well done, team!’ he announced.

At which nobody took any notice at all.

‘Athena will be so pleased with me,’ he continued. He ran his hands through his hair, gazing out over the water, now lying still beneath the moonlight. ‘Such a huge quest, filled with danger and ending with me choosing to square up to the cruel sorceress of Greece all alone,’ he said, beginning to rehearse his story for the Underworld. ‘Oh, how the goddesses will swoon when I tell them I trusted to love, only to have Medea
viciously try to destroy me. Yet I managed to break free, despatch the monster and, battered and bruised, raced down the bluff to snatch the shield from your trembling hands.’

Behind him, Alex, Rose, Aries and Wat exchanged looks of absolute disbelief as Jason leaped backwards, holding an imaginary shield in his hands.

‘Of course, since you’d wasted the Nemesis on the monster,’ he went on, staring out at the water, ‘I was forced to think on my feet. But that old Perseus shield-flip, eh, Alex? They’ll love that. Oh, wait till I tell Apollonius. What a flourish he’ll end my tale on!’

Laughing, he glanced back over his shoulder.

And found he was standing completely alone.

A few days later, Rose stretched luxuriously in her pink squishy chair, smiling as the air stewardess walked towards her, carrying a tray of lime-green mango coolers. Picking up a glass, she took a long sip, feeling the citrus tingle on her tongue, and watched her father, seated beside her, gazing out of the window, transfixed by the river, twisting through the rainforest below.

Surprised?

Rose was.

Suddenly her father glanced back at her over his shoulder and pointed to something through the aircraft window.

‘Jabiru stork!’ he cried, his cheeks flushed. ‘Rose! Come and have a look!’

Setting down her glass, Rose jumped up and pressed her forehead against the window. Beneath them, a flock of great white birds flapped and wheeled, their black heads gleaming in the sunlight.

‘They were believed to be almost extinct!’ he said. ‘This is amazing!’

Rose turned back to her father, beaming. His eyes were bright, glittering with excitement.

‘Yes,’ she said, feeling her heart soar like the birds outside. ‘It is!’

She sat back down and listened as he gabbled on about flight paths and nesting sites, delighted to hear the warmth in his voice, brimming with all the old enthusiasm she’d missed for so long, and felt a wave of pure joy engulf her.

Even now, she could hardly believe all the remarkable things that had happened since they’d defeated the sorceress. Starting with the realisation that she’d been right about her own magic. You see, when she’d splashed her spell over the bubble, reversing Medea’s murderous magic to save Alex and Wat, she’d proved that her magic and Medea’s were two very different forces.

The sorceress’s magic was big and world-changing. It was driven by the sort of gold that should stay locked in tombs, or left at the bottom of lagoons, because it conjured up murder, mayhem and misery, and ruined people’s lives. Rose’s magic was smaller and more personal. Most importantly, it was kinder, just like the gold given with the love that fuelled it.

Taking a deep breath, she closed her eyes, feeling the sunshine stream through the window, warming her face. Drifting into her thoughts, she felt an even bigger glow inside, certain now that her worry earlier that week – that dabbling in magic would make her as cold-hearted and
selfish as Medea – was completely unfounded. She could stay the same old Rose as she’d ever been, but with her own magic too, magic that would do good things.

Better still, Alex and Aries had believed it too.

Which was why for the last few days they’d helped her brew enough potion to take her father safely back to London.

She stifled a giggle, thinking back to Aries, who’d become quite the celebrity in the village, all decked out with garlands of orchids and his face striped with ochre, stirring the potion in the big scrying pot, a long spoon in his mouth, twirling his tail round and round in concentration. Meanwhile, Wat had busied himself finding the ingredients and Alex had trimmed phoenix feathers, sneezing in a blizzard of copper-brown tendrils.

Jason, as I don’t suppose you’ll be at all surprised to hear, had been about as much use as a concrete kite. Choosing to spend the time waiting for Eduardo to come to collect them lolling beneath the trees drinking milk from coconut shells, he’d boasted to any passing villager who’d listen. And, oh, how the tribeswomen had swooned when he told them about killing the three-headed cat, simpering at how he’d survived the swarm of army ants and sighing at how boldly he’d led a boy and a ram through the jungle.

Meanwhile, Rose had found it horribly difficult to concentrate on spell-casting, her blood boiling at overhearing his tall tales whilst she’d worked inside Medea’s hut. How dare he, she’d riled, carry on lying and cheating
and making himself the big, clever, hero when he’d really done nothing but run away and abandon the others? As you might imagine, she’d had just about enough of people warping the truth lately and yet here he was, bragging and swaggering, leaving her, frankly, flabbergasted that he’d ever become the long-remembered Greek hero up on Earth, fearless and undaunted, in books and movies. At least until the others explained that his fame rested solely on some ridiculous old poem written years after the actual voyage of the
Argo
, because the ship’s log had been lost overboard at sea.

Lost?

Tossed, more like, she decided, and, thinking back to what she’d read about him in the journal-scroll, imagined him flinging it into the waves himself, in a rage at reading the true account of his ‘courage’. Only for a slim, white hand to dip into the green and retrieve it as a fond keepsake for years afterwards.

‘Penny for your thoughts,’ said Hazel, jolting her from her light doze.

Rose opened her eyes to see the pop star walking back into the cabin from the sleeping quarters at the back. She still looked exhausted and pale, and when she smiled, Rose noticed that it didn’t quite reach her eyes.

‘I want to thank you,’ said Rose.

Hazel sat down beside her, a little awkwardly, biting her lower lip, and Rose realised that even now Hazel still felt ashamed about leaving her alone in the jungle to find her father. Yet Hazel had tried to be a good friend,
she really had, Rose knew that, but Medea was just too smart and spiteful an enemy. She thought back to the spider scuttling over the cabin floor towards Hazel, and shuddered, certain now that the sorceress had sent it, transformed into a lily, simply to split the two of them up. After all, Rose thought, Medea had always known exactly which buttons to press to make people do precisely as she wanted, and Hazel had been easy prey to her.

‘I mean it,’ said Rose earnestly. ‘For everything you’ve done. For getting me here, for busting Alex and Aries out of the police station and helping them find me, and for flying Dad and me home. And, especially,’ she smiled, remembering the sound of the cheering crowds filling the Manaus Opera House, ‘for last night.’

Hazel shrugged. ‘It’s the least I could do.’

‘Hardly,’ said Rose, handing her a drink from the tray and knowing how far Hazel had gone out of her way to help, offering to throw the freebie concert at the opera house, calling in lots of favours from her musicians scattered all round the globe and flying them back to work day and night through the weekend to make it a success. Meaning that, for the first time since the disastrous first night of
Madama Butterfly
– whereupon Rosita de Bonita had fled to Venice to rest her arias – the building had been opened up again. Hazel had performed to a delighted crowd, distracting just about everyone, simply so that a gang of ghosts could sneak in, unnoticed, to hurry to the statue of Orpheus on the first floor.

Hazel took the seat opposite Rose’s father and leaned
forward to listen to him tell her about the lecture he was planning to give on his return: how soon after they’d found evidence of the old tribe there’d been a terrible accident on the lagoon and, unable to cope mentally, he’d been cared for by the Kaxuyana and Medea – a fashion designer, of all people! – until Rose, his wonderful daughter, had managed, with Hazel’s generous help, to find him.

Smiling, Rose thought back to the whoops and cheers of the crowd the night before, thrumming through the elegant corridor, as she’d stood with the others. She recalled the matching expressions on Alex’s and Aries’ faces, triumphant to have succeeded in the quest, but frustrated too, and angry, as Jason shot through the doorway ahead of them and raced down the glistening rocky corridor, back to the Underworld.

‘It’ll be all right,’ Rose had promised them. ‘Going home this time will be different.’

Alex had shrugged, unconvinced, smiled and hugged her again, and after several more rough rammy licks from Aries, and a splendidly flamboyant bow from Wat,
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they’d turned and stepped into the corridor back to the Underworld.

Sighing contentedly, she reached into the pocket of her shorts and brought out the small chunk of gold that
was all that was left of Aries’ horn after using it on the gallons of Reversal Potion they’d made. It glinted, buttery in the sunshine. Gold, from a fabulous creature of myth and given with love, gold that had powered the potion, and filled the hut with trails of blue and green smoke, stars and giggles.

And yet, so many things lately had glittered on the surface only to turn out to be something much darker on the inside: Medea’s hollow promises, what truly lay at the heart of the El Dorado gold, and Jason’s ‘legendary’ courage. She turned the nugget over in her fingers. But some things had remained twenty-four-carat pure, hallmarked and genuine. Like Alex’s and Aries’ friendship. They’d come back and protected her, saving her, not from Medea, but from her own dazzled foolishness, bringing her back to her senses before she could have put the wretched El Dorado gold into Medea’s hands. She shivered, knowing how close she’d come to making the sorceress unstoppable, arming her with enough power to stir up wars and bring down famines, to turn people against one another, to poison all the good things around her until they were rotted and deadly.

Sitting back, she wondered about the future, certain that her magic had a place in it. But only a small one. After all, it was no match for friends and family. Her magic had rescued her father from the jungle, making him temporarily well enough to travel home to London. But it was the doctors and nurses who would truly heal him, together with his family and friends, the people who loved
him. She shivered, understanding that Medea had never known that sort of love in her life. Neglected as a little girl, abandoned by a father who’d spent his days in awe of the Golden Fleece, only to be heartlessly betrayed by Jason, the only man she’d ever cared for, she’d come to rely on magic instead. Ever more powerful, ever more poisonous, ever more twisted, it had given her what she needed and turned her into the person she’d become.

Still, Rose smiled, buttoning the gold safely back into her pocket, Aries’ gold, together with the ingredients from Medea’s hut, now jammed into the rucksack at her feet, would certainly be useful. After all, she reminded herself, fledgling sorceresses needed something to open portals in London museums when the guards weren’t looking, in order to visit their best friends in the Underworld, didn’t they?

She tilted her chair back and rested her head on its big fluffy cushion.

In a few hours’ time they would land at Dallas and change to the flight back to London. She could hardly wait to see her mother’s astonished face when her husband walked into the arrivals lounge, and knew that all of their lives were about to change for the better.

Just like Alex’s and Aries’.

As she drifted off to sleep, she saw them again in her mind’s eye, walking away, framed by the rocky, torch-lit corridor back to the Underworld: a ram with a broken horn, a muddy boy with snakes looming over his shoulder hissing their goodbyes to her, and Wat, trailing ribbons
of stuffing from his ruined puffballs, as the echoes of Jason’s footsteps rang back to them. They looked like anything but heroes. Not like Jason, bounding ahead, impatient to delight Athena with his tale as he gave her the rather special present that Rose had sent her, all wrapped and tied with ribbons, to thank her for sending them back and protecting her from Medea.

But then, she smiled, imagining Athena opening her gift, it was always what was on the inside that counted.

‘Two treats in one day!’ cried Athena, as Jason handed her the gift. ‘Not only does our greatest hero return, but he brings me an Earth souvenir, too!’ she smiled.

In the flickering torchlight of the throne room of Castle Hades, the goddesses Hera, Euterpe and Artemis clapped wildly, whilst Aphrodite leaped forward and planted a kiss on the Argonaut’s cheek. Meanwhile, standing right at the back, way behind the jostling crowd of courtiers and maids who’d gathered at the news of Jason’s return, Aries looked up at Alex and Wat, a furious snort rumbling low in his throat. As it grew, people glanced back over their shoulders, tutting before scowling at Alex. Clearly, he thought, expecting him to clamp the ram’s mouth shut, the way he usually did.

Except that he wasn’t likely to do that again.

Ever.

Instead, he stared back at them, as the trembling bellow grew louder. Soon, it became ferocious enough for people to step aside as they nervously gave Aries a
wide berth, accidentally opening up a pathway over the glittering mosaic floor to the two huge thrones at the front.

Now Alex could see Athena clearly, her face beaming as she unpicked the red ribbon of Rose’s gift, and he rubbed Aries’ head, wondering again why Rose had been quite so keen to send the goddess something.

Beside her, Persephone looked up and, spotting Wat, leaned forward to Jason.

‘A guest?’ she murmured. ‘Have you brought us back some new company, too? You are so, so clever!’ Giggling, she slipped off her throne and skipped through the sea of nods and curtseys to Wat, who gave the most splendid bow of all.

‘Madam,’ he said, straightening up again. ‘Wat Raleigh, explorer, poet and soldier at your service!’

‘Ooo, goody!’ said Persephone, quickly sliding her arm through his. ‘How completely exciting. Do tell us all about the quest! Was it horribly frightening? Were you scared?’ She glanced down at his tattered satin pants, her eyes like saucers. ‘And what happened to those?’

‘Fain, it was terrifying,’ said Wat, escorting her back to her throne. ‘A daring enterprise from start to finish, but, madam, verily it is these two,’ he turned back to smile at Alex and Aries, quieter now, who were following behind, ‘this brave boy and this magnificent ram, whom you should be prettily chin-wagging with. For the exploit was entirely theirs.’ He smiled, stroking his neat beard. ‘With a little starring role for myself, of course.’

‘Really?’ Distracted, Athena glanced up from her half-unwrapped parcel.

‘Yes!’ snorted Aries, and slammed down a hoof.

‘No,’ smiled Jason, stepping quickly in front of Wat and offering a dazzling smile, as the other goddesses encircled him, giggling. ‘Can’t you see the man’s a clown? Why else would he be wearing such ridiculous clothes?’