Authors: Julia Wills
Fleeced (16 page)
Around about now, were I an estate agent, I’d be telling you how Medea’s house was ‘one of a kind’ and ‘full of her own personal style’. I’d point out the long row of Greek-looking pillars that stretched the width of the building, and its spacious entrance hall, turned into a garden room, with its black-and-white chessboard floor and huge glass doors that folded back to open up one wall of the room to the outside. I’d probably rave on about the mansion’s high ceilings, black glass chandeliers and marble staircases, and mention its twelve bedrooms and vine-entwined greenhouse, too.
But I wouldn’t say anything about its secret passages.
And definitely not the vile-smelling one Medea was now ushering her unwilling guests down, the one that led deep underground to the cellar. No, I’d hurry straight past that, holding a tissue delicately to my nose, and mention that some parts of the house had potential. However, even though I’m not an estate agent, I can tell you that the only potential that cellar had was for misery and suffering.
With his stomach heaving against the stench, Alex followed Medea, Aries and Fred down the
gloomy corridor. With each step he took the dreadful stink seemed to grow stronger, until it became so thick he thought he might reach out and touch it. Sweet and rancid, it made him think of the Hydra’s tank when the water needed changing. (Personally, I couldn’t comment, never having met a Hydra, but in my writerly wisdom I imagine that they whiff of bad eggs and kippers mixed in a bin and left to rot for about four weeks. Possibly five.)
Up ahead, in the firelight cast by iron
sconces
, Alex glimpsed the ripple of Medea’s dress, luminous against the dark stone of the wall as she vanished around yet another corner, sprightly beyond Aries’ struggling bulk. Her footsteps echoed back over the cool stone as his mind raced. Where was she taking them? Why had she kidnapped them? Where was Rose? How would he get them all out of there? Questions jangled in his head like the squall of Pandemic’s pipes until, turning another corner, he almost crashed into Aries who was hunched on the floor, blocking the way. Alex felt his throat tighten, although whether it was from the rancid air or the unearthly squeals he could now hear from beyond a huge wooden door set into the wall ahead of them, he wasn’t sure.
“Let’s get this over with!” muttered Medea.
Holding her sleeve against her nose, she drew back the giant bolts on the door and dragged it open.
Terrified shrieking flooded out on a tidal wave of foetid air.
“You’re not taking me down there!” shouted Aries over the din, desperately trying to clop backwards from the doorway.
Tightening the rope around his meaty fist, Fred’s eye blinked furiously.
Behind them, Alex stepped forwards and looked through the doorway, down the wooden staircase that lay beyond it and gasped.
The cellar was full of sheep.
Sheep with black faces, white faces, buck teeth and no teeth. Sheep with curly horns, straight horns and horns like bedsprings. Sheep with grey coats, white coats, tight coats, stringy coats and spirals of
trail-in-
the-mud coats. All jammed together, miserably packed into lots of small pens set side by side in long, bleak rows criss-crossed by walkways covered with
greasy straw. Their bleats and wails filled the air, suddenly louder, as Medea appeared in the doorway.
Feeling sicker than ever, Alex realised that the stench in the air was a disgusting brew of dung, sweat and lanolin
25
all mixed together with pure shivering fear.
Dragging his eyes away from the sheep he looked around the rest of the cellar.
A bench ran the length of its opposite wall. Lit by spluttering candles in black candelabra, it was littered with stone bowls, pots of smoking liquids, branches of ivy and yew and scattered crystals. Two electrodes lay in a bowl of ruby-red solution surrounded by clumps of glassy green rocks. A long syringe lay dribbling gold-coloured liquid from its needle into a gleaming puddle. Nearby, a sheep’s skull lay overturned and half-covered in tangled hanks of wool.
Aware now of a slow, grinding creak above his head, Alex looked up to the ceiling where a wide wheel turned slowly. Others wheezed and spluttered in the shadows. Further away banks of rollers, spikes, long poles and prodders hung from glimmering tracks criss-crossing the ceiling high above the animals. In the middle of the room, two multi-legged contraptions scuttled along the ceiling like giant spiders, their
slender metallic arms pummelling the backs of a pen of sheep underneath. Beyond them a line of cranes bobbed fiercely, fitted with long handled rakes that tugged at the fleeces of some shaggy brown sheep; in the far corner, something resembling a rubber seal hung motionless above three grey sheep, ready to slap its flippers against their flanks.
Alex turned back to Medea. “What is this place?”
“My workshop,” she smiled.
“It looks more like a torture chamber!”
“Why, thank you,” said Medea sweetly.
Lifting the hem of her dress, she stepped through the door and down the steps into the first walkway. Bleating, the sheep drew back from her, receding like a woolly tide against the far walls of their pens as she passed.
All except one.
A ram with wool as shaggy as ostrich feathers and light brown horns that curled back over its head stood in the space left by the retreating others. Standing firm, he met her glare with
caramel-coloured
eyes. Was it his imagination, Alex wondered, or was the ram looking at her in disgust?
“You?” sniggered Medea.
She pulled a lever and released a jet of water onto the animal’s back. Shivering, the ram gasped and
closed its eyes as the water drenched his straggly wool.
“Now, come along,” she called back up the steps. “Nice as it is to entertain guests, I haven’t got all day.”
As you might imagine the next part of the story was even more stinky and unpleasant and so I’ll make it brief.
There was squealing and scuffling as Fred dragged Aries down the steps and pummelled him into a solitary pen set apart from the others. Made with thick metal bars and roofed in, it was quite different from the rather ordinary stalls that held the sheep and more like a cage.
Followed by a hammering off hooves as Aries tried to break free.
Then there was a lot of yelling as Alex tried to stop Fred slamming the door shut on Aries by wrapping himself around the Cyclops’s stubby legs.
And a horrible new odour as Fred broke out in a sweat making him smell even more like a mouldy onion left in the bottom of a bucket.
Finally, there was muttering.
Now I’m only mentioning the muttering because with that racket going on, no one else would’ve heard it. Except possibly a bat, picking it up on its satellite dishes of ears, save that no self-respecting bat would’ve flown within a mile of the cellar.
So, you’ll just have to take my word for it.
The mutterer was Hex.
Having been banished earlier that morning to another part of the cellar, with Medea’s list of unpleasant preparations for Aries’ arrival, he’d been distracted by the rumpus next door and, tasting strangers on the air, had slithered in to investigate. Now, looped over an upturned crate like a discarded pair of tights, he dangled with his job list hanging from his right fang, watching.
Aries, as he’d expected, was hunched miserably in his solitary pen, sulking.
But the boy’s behaviour intrigued him.
Sitting there, skinny as an antelope, he hardly looked like the Greek hero Hex’d expected after the harpy had failed so miserably that morning. Even more puzzling, despite the boy’s own precarious situation, he was reaching through the bars to Aries, trying to console him with strokes and whispers.
“Having a lie down are we, earthworm?” Hex jumped at Medea’s voice and looked up to see her pointing her finger casually at Alex. “Kill him!”
Hex spat out his job list and shot over the floor. Then, swaying from side to side like a snake charmer’s cobra, he rose until his snout was level with Alex’s eyes. Doing his best to ignore Aries’ thunderous
bellows, he froze as rigid as a walking stick and adopted his death-strike position. Humans, as he’d discovered back in the African savannah, always collapsed into trembling wrecks at this and gibbered for mercy through blood-drained lips.
Except that Alex hadn’t flinched.
Instead, he looked back at the snake with an oddly suspicious expression.
Puzzled, Hex drew back his lips and made his terrifying mouth-of-doom face, intent on reducing the boy to a wobbling bundle of fear that would tenderise him for biting.
Yet the boy simply continued to stare into Hex’s eyes, his face quite tranquil.
Feeling slightly embarrassed now, Hex resorted to the mini death-jabs his father had taught him and began jerking his head violently, left, right, up, down, in, out.
They never failed to horrify.
Except today.
“Hex!” The sorceress’s voice chilled the scales on his back. “Will you please do your job?”
Stretching his mouth wide, Hex revealed his sparkling fangs and lurched forwards. As Aries roared in horror, Hex felt cold venom shoot into his teeth, took one final look in Alex’s eyes…
… and recognised his expression.
Unimpressed.
It was written all over the boy’s face.
Hex’s mamba mind reeled as the word buzzed through it like a mosquito, distracting him completely since he’d not encountered it on a victim’s face before.
Terror, desperation, paralysing panic?
Yes, often.
But unimpressed?
No.
He’d only ever seen that on the mistress’s face (usually when she was talking to him) her ‘whatever’ face, as he called it.
“That does it!” shrieked Medea, incensed at Hex’s hesitation. Grabbing him by the throat, she lifted him up and fixed him with a furious stare. “How dare you show me up like this? I’ve seen scarier looking cucumbers!”
It was unfortunate (for Hex’s neck) that he hadn’t known how well Alex knew snakes. Having cared for Drako, the biggest and most ferocious snake who’d ever glided over the earth, Alex had long ago learned that snakes only attacked when they felt truly threatened by an enemy. The rest of the time they preferred mooching about and snoozing to striking
someone dead for no good reason. And so, wholly convinced that Hex was only driven by the sorceress’s spiteful demand, he knew he could be put off.
“Fred!” snapped Medea, turning to the Cyclops, who’d been busy smelling his armpits.
“I need a new familiar!” she spat. “Old jelly-fangs can’t even scare a boy! I want you to ring London Zoo and organise the generous donation of a mamba. I’ll get rid of Alex myself!”
“Dodo?” said the Cyclops.
“Do-na-tion,” said Medea impatiently, flinging Hex in a heap on the floor. “It means gift,
goggle-brain
! Pack him in one of my old sewing baskets and get rid of him immediately!”
Hex’s tongue quivered in fright as the sorceress swept past him, up the steps and out of the cellar. Life with her, as you can imagine, was ghastly but the sudden prospect of being sent to snake prison, held captive in a cramped vivarium with a bunch of bolshy boas whilst children poked their fingers against the glass all day was utterly unthinkable.
The sudden slam of ram against metal snapped
Hex out of his panicked thoughts.
“Alex!” bellowed Aries, hurling himself against his stall bars as Fred began bumping the boy up the stairs behind him, dragging him over the steps like
a bad-tempered child with a teddy bear.
“Let him go!” bellowed Aries, throwing himself at the bars again and again.
Hex’s ears rang. Around him the other sheep bleated wildly, their shrieks almost drowning out the cacophony of ringing metal.
“I’ll – come – back!” gasped Alex from the top of the stairs, a squirm of flailing arms and legs. “I prom—”
The door clanged shut.
In the shrill din of the cellar, Aries slumped against the bars, snorting rapidly and sinking to his haunches.
For a moment, Hex paused, pondering why Alex would even think of trying to rescue such a ridiculous bald ram. Then he remembered that he had far more important things to worry about thanks to this same boy who’d caused him to fail so spectacularly in front of Medea. Feeling his fear crystallise into anger, and wondering what sort of revenge might save him from the zoo, he slithered down a gap in the stonework floor.
25
. Lanolin is a wax that sheep produce in their skins, which makes their wool waterproof. People use it to make shoe polish and lotions that stop babies getting rashes on their bottoms. (Obviously these are two different products, otherwise your baby brother or sister would have a polished black waterproof bottom.)
Things weren’t going well, were they?
But then, I suppose two children and a ram were never going to be much of a match for a sneaky, all-powerful sorceress, were they? After all, how many ancient Greek superheroes with farmyard sidekicks have you heard of?
Well, quite.
Ten minutes later Alex was having a lie down. That was the good news. The bad news was that it was because the sorceress had strapped him to a marble plinth, hidden inside a building in her garden that was fashioned to look like a miniature Greek temple. Indeed, from the outside the building’s carved pediments and columns made it appear a charming spot for a summer glass of lemonade. However, such architectural merit was of little comfort to Alex since he:
a. Was imprisoned on the inside, and
b. Couldn’t see anything but coffins.
That’s right.
Coffins.
Dark wood, golden wood, crumbling wood and mouldering wood coffins that lay stacked on the stone shelves rising either side of him like some ghastly filing cabinet of the dead. Unfortunately this was because Alex was now inside Medea’s private crypt. And, although he (luckily) didn’t realise it, each coffin actually held the remains of some curious person or other, some courtier, maid, model or journalist, who’d over the centuries come a tad too close to discovering who Medea really was and precisely what she was doing. Caught snooping, each nosy parker had consequently been strapped to the very same plinth as Alex and forgotten about. Whenever this happened one of Medea’s servants had been dispatched months later to ‘tidy up’, sweeping the scatter of bones into a fresh coffin and stacking it on a shelf.
Straining against the leather straps that bound his chest, arms and legs, Alex’s mind returned to the sheep in the cellar. He knew it wasn’t logical for a sorceress, and a glamorous one at that, to keep such animals.
Cheetahs or leopards?
Yes, maybe.
Even a hulking vulture with a razor-sharp beak.
But never sheep.
Suddenly an icy feeling seeped into his stomach and turned his insides to frozen slush. But, much as we need one of those candles-lighting-in-the-lantern moments, where Alex would realise what Medea was up to, I’m sorry, this wasn’t it. No, Alex’s sudden dread was because the crypt door had groaned open and now he was aware that someone else was in the room too, and that their breathing was growing steadily closer…
Meanwhile at that precise moment, the only breathing Aries could hear was his own.
Slumped on the floor, he gulped and wheezed, sucking in great mouthfuls of air and gusting them out again, utterly exhausted. This was because he’d spent the last twenty minutes hurling his considerable bulk against the gate of his stall in a frenzied attempt to escape. But unfortunately, not only was he just as trapped as he’d been when he started, but his ears were now ringing painfully from the jangle of his horns against metal (which in case you’re wondering is a sound much like that produced by a troop of monkeys armed with wooden spoons let loose in a saucepan factory) and his head throbbed violently.
But still, he absolutely couldn’t give up.
Not when he was sure that the fleece was here
with Medea. Not when being stuck down here was the closest he’d been to his magnificent coat for over three thousand years. And not when every time he closed his eyes, he saw the terrified look on Alex’s face as they’d dragged him out of the cellar.
He had to get out.
Hauling himself to his hooves, he lowered his head and fixed his stare on the gate again. And jumped when a small voice piped up from the gloom. “That metal’s magic!”
Aries swung his head round and stared in astonishment at a lamb with a face as bumpy as a potato grinning at him from beneath a helmet tangled with red and blue wires that spiralled in all directions.
Aries blinked. “You can talk?”
The lamb nodded.
“We all can,” said an ewe, stepping out from the woolly wall of sheep behind the youngster. Sturdy, with the same tightly coiled wool as the lamb and honey-gold horns that curled back over her head, she looked sadly at Aries. “Medea likes to hear how frightened we are, so she bewitched us into talking.”
Aries looked from the ewe to her lamb and back again. “How long have you been down here?”
“Nearly a year,” answered the ewe. “I’m Martha.
I was captured from Somerset. But my little Toby was born here. He’s never seen anything but this disgusting place.”
Aries couldn’t help but remember his own lambhood, spent leaping around the sun-drenched hills of old Greece, glittering like a starburst, the scent of jacaranda in the air. And despite his urgent desire to find the fleece, his gnawing worry about Alex, not to mention his throbbing headache, Aries felt an overwhelming surge of pity course through him from hooves to muzzle as he pictured Toby, growing up in this mouldering candlelit prison full of machinery.
More furious than ever, he thumped the bars again with his horns, sending a resounding clang bouncing around the walls.
“Give up,” said a deep voice with a lilting
sing-song
accent.
Aries looked through the clustered sheep to see the shaggy-coated ram that Medea had drenched half an hour ago step away from the others. Slender, with bright, questioning eyes, the ram tilted its head, regarding him haughtily down a long creamy muzzle, still glittering with water. “No matter how hard you try, da metal of your pen never buckle will. It’s enchanted to be super-strong.”
“But you don’t understand!” Aries shook his head
impatiently. “I have to get out of here! I am Aries Khrysamallos!”
“
Já, já, já,
” muttered the ram. “And I am Olaf.”
“Mr Olaf,” said Aries coolly, “you do realise that I am the ram of the Golden Fleece?”
“Golden golden blah blah blah,” murmured Olaf. “Yes, we know all about you, ram. Medea and da serpent talk of you much.”
“They do?” said Aries, for a moment forgetting his annoyance with the sullen ram. He stuck up his ears, expectantly. “And what do they say?”
At which Olaf turned away and started to polish his horn against the bar of his pen.
“Well, come on!” prompted Aries. “This is important.”
“Dey talk of using da fleece,” said Olaf. “Dat’s all.”
“Using it?” said Aries, frowning. “How?”
Olaf shrugged. “For her magic, I suppose.”
“What magic?”
Olaf looked up at him and sniggered. “You think sorceresses confide in dere livestock,
já
?”
“No, of course not!” snapped Aries. “But one of you might have overheard something helpful. About where they keep it?” He looked quickly up and down the long rows of sheep faces in case anyone
had. But no one spoke. Instead, they continued chewing and staring dismally into the gloom.
“Anyway,” smiled Aries, “the wonderful thing is that it’s still here!” A tingle of excitement shot down his legs at speaking the words out loud. “I just have to get it!”
At which Olaf, looking rather bored, stretched out his front leg and examined his hoof.
“Mr Olaf!” Aries felt his anger rising again. “I would appreciate your help! Must I remind you, I am a ram of legend? I’ve never been held in a stall in my life.”
Now Olaf turned to Aries, pulling his head up against the rattle of chain, a glint of rage in his caramel eyes. “Is dat so, famous ram? Well, neither had I!” He stood tall and proud. “I am from north of Iceland where snowy skies match my wool.” He tossed his head to the left. “Here are bighorn sheep from Rocky Mountains, dere are Booroolas from Australian ranch.” He jabbed his horns in the direction of the pens lining the shadowy wall at the back of the cellar. “Over dere are Dorsets, Cotswolds and Wensleydales from English meadows. You think we belong in stalls?”
“Well, no,” said Aries, uncomfortably aware that the other sheep were now staring at him. He glanced at their faces, long or round, white or blotched with black, framed with ringlets, fuzz or tight curls,
beginning to wonder why there were quite so many breeds of sheep down here. “But I can assure you that if I had not been robbed of my fleece, I certainly would not be down here.”
“Had you not been robbed,” replied Olaf hotly, meeting Aries’ gaze, “neither would we.”
Aries paused, searching the Icelandic’s disgruntled face, wondering what he meant.
“What are you talking about?” he said. “It’s Medea’s fault you’re here, not mine. But if you’d be so kind as to help me get out of here so that I might find my fleece, then I’ll leave you all in peace.”
“In peace?” scoffed Olaf, casting a glance at the grinding machinery overhead. “Certainly, let’s all help da poor golden ram!”
Aries snorted. “Mr Olaf, I don’t like your tone!”
“Oh really?” said Olaf, bristling. “Maybe dere are other things here you will not like, also!”
Aries felt his anger cool into confusion. “Like what?”
For a moment the Icelandic looked away.
“Olaf?” persisted Aries.
“Like da fact your fleece you never will find!”
Aries shook his head. “Don’t be so absurd! Obviously, I’ll need to be careful and I suppose it might take a few hours to search the house, but—”
“It’s gone, ram!” Olaf’s face grew pink with impatience. “All gone!”
“Gone?” Aries snorted, incredulous. “What are you talking about?”
“Da sorceress has used it all up! I hear her say last week to snake, ‘Only one ringlet left. Den nothing!’”
Aries felt the air gush from his lungs. “Don’t be so ridiculous!”
“Ridiculous, is that? You don’t think sorceress with cellar full of sheep is ridiculous?” Olaf took a step forwards. “You don’t wonder why we all here?”
Aries took a step back, his mind whirling, his head suddenly pounding with the slap of paddles and groan of turning wheels.
“I don’t know,” he said finally, aware of a very bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, a feeling that was getting stronger.
“Golden ram, she is trying to make new fleece!”
Aries lurched backwards on wobbling legs and crashed into the back of the pen.
“Look round you! She try everything,” said Olaf. “Every breed! Slapping, drenching, combing with magical wood! She inject us, bathe us, shock us with sparks.”
Aries slid down, floored by the horror of what he was hearing. That the fleece was gone! That Medea
could be so cruel! He scrunched his eyes tight shut and wished he could shut his ears too as Olaf went on. “She feed three sheep with mixture of gold and magical roots. Now all die. None of her plans work! But now see! Finally, she has herself da highly very important ram of da Golden Fleece! Perhaps now her scheme work and she leave rest of us alone?”
And so saying he bustled round and pointed his bottom towards Aries. At which, the other sheep, being sheep, copied him immediately, so that just a few seconds later, every sheep in the cellar had turned their bottom towards Aries in a great big woolly wall.
And I’m sorry.
This whole episode has just been far too ghastly for me to talk about any more. If I had a woolly bottom I’d probably join in with the others, because words fail me. But I don’t, so I’m off.
Unlike Alex and Aries, Rose wasn’t having an unpleasant time at all. In fact, whilst Alex lay captive in the crypt and Aries endured his most terrible night since his fleece had been stolen in the first place, Rose was standing on the ornate balcony of a bedroom in Medea’s villa sipping a cool blackcurrant cocktail. She’d found it waiting for her,
fizzing in a crystal glass on the ledge and now, as it popped and bubbled on her tongue she gazed down at the swimming pool and the candles encircling it, splashing spangles of light in the water.
Perhaps you think that drinking something made by a sorceress is a bad idea? Well, of course it is. But before you lose heart with Rose for being silly, just remember the sort of day she’d had. Frankly, it had left her horribly frightened and anxious, not to mention thirsty, and seeing that dark, sparkling drink had simply been too tempting. Now, as she let its blackberry bubbles burst on her tongue, she began to feel deeply relaxed.
However, as you’ve probably guessed, blackberries weren’t the only ingredients in Rose’s drink.
There were also:
a. Poppies – the lush Bolivian sort that make you feel chilled and confident that everything is going to be lovely, not the ones you see in hedgerows;
b. Moonwort – a fern that dissolves all your worries with a fizz and a burp;
c. Parsnips of Petrinus – the super-sneakiest plant in any sorceress’s allotment, one spoonful of these and you’re ready to believe
anything. (Believe me, if plants had jobs, which obviously they don’t since they can’t wear trousers and catch the bus to the office, then these harmless-looking vegetables would work as stage hypnotists, the sort that convince people they’re squawking chickens or sailors swabbing decks.)
Making the mixture a potent cocktail of carefree optimism, mixed in with a measure of dreamy gullibility, all topped off with a double dollop of wishful thinking.