Rampage! (13 page)

Alex was going to be very useful indeed.

XV

D
EAL
O
R
N
O
D
EAL
?

Rose stood on the riverbank, staring at the enormous Amazon water lilies, each the size of a child’s paddling pool, bobbing up and down on the sluggish black water. Lush pink flowers bloomed in the middle of their pads, except for the one in the middle, on which her father sat hunched like a lily-hopper, staring blindly into the green-tinted air.

Cupping her hands to her lips, Rose shouted out to him, so hard she thought her lungs would burst.

Yet no sound came out of her mouth.

Instead she felt a violent tug at her feet and gasped to see the thick mud sucking away from her boots as a freak current twisted through the river. Suddenly yanked down, she was slammed backwards against the bank, only dimly aware of the wet snap of roots as each lily ripped free of its moorings to be whirled away like fairground waltzers, vanishing around the river bend and taking her father with them.

‘Dad!’

Rose woke herself up with a start and blinked frantically in the dingy light. Around her, the world swayed and,
looking down, she discovered that she was lying in a red-and-white-striped hammock, a hammock now swinging violently beneath her, its ropes creaking around two posts either end, stretching up into a palm-leaved roof above her. Slowly, as her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she made out other hammocks strung around her, hanging like striped chrysalises, and, peering harder, she could see the shapes of women and children, curled up tightly in them, sleeping soundly. Faintly comforted by their low snores and mutterings, she turned her head slowly, noticing the mosquito nets at the windows, fluttering like ghosts, the woven mats scattered over a mud floor, a rough wooden table dotted with flickering night-lights held in gourds.

‘Hello, Rose.’

Rose jumped. Jerking her head round, she felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach. Medea was leaning against the far wall of the hut, her pale face dappled by the firelight of the lantern she carried. Rose pinched herself, certain that she must still be trapped in her horrible dream. Then, when that didn’t make any difference, she jammed her eyes tight shut and opened them again. But, as she was rapidly discovering, not all nightmares end because you happen to wake up and however many times she blinked and looked again, the sorceress was still there, still watching her with those silvery-grey eyes all creepy with concern.

The sorceress walked across the hut to the table, poured something from a clay jug into a beaker and turned towards Rose. ‘Thirsty?’

Shaking her head, Rose drew back against the scratchy fabric of her hammock, feeling fear coursing through her, searing her nerves like an electric shock and flipping her mind back to the last time she’d seen the sorceress. Now, as Medea picked her way deftly towards her, stepping lightly around the sleeping villagers, Rose remembered her turning circles between the red velvet seats at the Leicester Square theatre, drawing down her vicious magic, her face hollowed out like a crescent moon as Hazel screamed and screamed on the stage.

She bridled, edging away from her as the sorceress held out the beaker. The smell of pineapple juice made her stomach lurch and she bunched her hands into fists to stop them from shaking.

‘Oh, Rose,’ sighed Medea. ‘That’s not very friendly, is it? Don’t you even want to know why I’m here?’

Rose stared up at her, trembling. ‘Where’s Eduardo?’

‘He’s gone back to the
Tucano
.’

‘He’s
what
?’ Rose’s head swam with panic.

‘Such a sweet man,’ sighed Medea, before taking a sip of the juice herself. ‘He wanted my autograph for his granddaughters, you know? Said they’d read all about me and the jewellery I’m making out here, in some magazine or other. But you see, he’s about to become a grandfather again, so obviously he wanted to go back home.’ She examined her fingernails. ‘Even so, you wouldn’t believe how much convincing he took to leave you behind. But in the end, he had to accept that you weren’t up to
travelling back through the jungle right now. And so I told him I’d take extra-special care of you until you were strong enough to call him yourself. Look, you can see that your satellite phone’s there by the side of your bed.’

Rose squeezed her eyes shut in absolute dismay, wishing with all her heart that Eduardo had waited a little longer so that she might have told him about Medea, about who she really was and all the terrible things she’d done. Even though she could already imagine the blank look on the old captain’s face as soon as she said the S-word, she yearned to talk to him now.

‘Now don’t be like that, Rose,’ said Medea.

Rose flicked open her eyes and watched Medea set down her beaker on the floor, lift a three-legged stool over to the hammock and sit on it. ‘At least it gives you plenty of time to decide what to do.’

‘About what?’

‘Your father, of course,’ said Medea simply. In the glimmering light the sorceress’s face looked pallid and moon-like. ‘And the offer I’d like to make you.’

Rose shook her head furiously. ‘You must be joking!’

‘I hardly think this is the time for jokes,’ replied Medea stiffly. ‘So hear me out, because either way, you’ll still get to hate me. You can either hate me and watch your dad suffer, or hate me and cure him.’ She leaned in closer until Rose could feel her breath against her skin. ‘Choice is yours!’

‘Cure him?’ Rose whispered furiously, glancing quickly at the other sleepers. ‘I’m not going to cure him. He’s alive,
that’s all that matters. I’m going to take him back to London with me. Then he’ll have doctors and hospitals and proper people to look after him and ––’

‘How?’ interrupted the sorceress. The word hung between them, dead and heavy, like the clammy air in the hut. ‘Hmm?’ The sorceress leaned back and tapped her chin with a long white finger. ‘How are you going to take him to London, Rose? Surely you haven’t already forgotten how terrified he was when Eduardo only tried to get him to stand up and leave that tree? The way he squealed and fought like an animal to be left alone? Now, I’m no expert but I’d have to say I think it makes it rather unlikely you’d ever be able to entice him into a canoe, say, or a boat, or a plane. Especially,’ she gave Rose a cold little smile, ‘when he hasn’t the faintest idea of who you are!’

Rose flinched. The sorceress’s words struck her like spiteful little slaps. Feeling her eyes start to itch with tears, she blinked them back and took a deep breath. ‘Then I’ll get the doctors to come out to him,’ she said.

‘I see,’ said Medea. ‘And how long do you think they’d be prepared to stay out here in the jungle, standing around under that tree, before they started jabbing him with needles? Or restraining him? Tying him to a stretcher and bundling him out of the jungle, squirming and struggling? Is that
really
what you want? Your father taken against his will, back to England, to stare blindly through some rain-streaked window of a mental ward for years?’

‘Of course not!’ Rose hissed, annoyed at a tear that now ran hotly down her cheek. She pawed it away quickly so that Medea wouldn’t see.

‘Then listen to what I have to say! Your father is dreadfully unwell. Something must have happened to him and his team out here in the jungle.’ Medea paused and raised an eyebrow archly. ‘Because the others aren’t here, are they?’ she said simply. ‘They’re gone. And I think that whatever happened to them must have been so dreadful that it’s shocked your father’s mind into numbness, shutting it down like a locked room with the lights off.’

Rose stared at her, appalled, feeling her heart twist. She hadn’t thought it was possible to feel any worse than she had that afternoon.

‘I know what I’m talking about, Rose. In fact, I’m absolutely certain, because I’ve seen this before.’

‘What are you talking about?’

The sorceress tossed back her head. ‘A hundred years ago, I was seamstress to the most important officers in the First World War. Always in demand, I hand-stitched their dress uniforms for fancy dinners with the generals. But I saw things, Rose. Soldiers so badly damaged from being bombed in the trenches that they were left trembling wrecks, unable to eat or think properly, unable to recognise their own reflections in the mirror. In their minds they were still knee-deep in mud, their ears ringing with the blast of bombs raining down on them. They had that same glassy look in the eyes as your father,
made the same gibbering noises. Most took years to recover.’ She shrugged. ‘Some never did.’

Rose stared at her, horror-stricken, feeling her breath leave her body as she recalled her father and his smiling team, all those months ago, waving as they boarded the plane in the sunshine. Now she saw them hollow-eyed, their clothes torn and filthy, stumbling blindly through the jungle thickets, and for the millionth time she wondered just what had happened to the expedition. She shivered as a feeling of sickness crawled up her throat.

‘Why let your father suffer when between us we could make him well enough to leave for London next week?’

‘Next week?’ Rose gasped, shaking her head, bewildered. ‘I don’t believe you!’

‘You don’t?’ Medea lowered her voice and shrugged lightly. ‘Then let me prove it to you. Let’s see! When you were six years old, your father bought you a spinning top, an old-fashioned one, didn’t he? It had pictures of dogs on it, spaniels wearing red bows.’

A shiver raced up Rose’s spine.

‘But, dearie me,’ continued Medea, ‘that very same day you accidentally knocked it down the stairs. It was so dented, it wouldn’t work any more, leaving you inconsolable and crying your little heart out. So the next day your father drove to almost every toy shop in London to find an identical one for you.’

‘How could you possibly know that?’ exclaimed Rose.

Ignoring her question, the sorceress went on, holding Rose’s now furious and bewildered gaze. ‘Your parents used to call you Rosebud when you were a toddler. In fact, there’s an engraving of the same flower on the back of that locket you’re wearing.’

Rose reached instinctively for the necklace. ‘But ––’

‘That locket is made from a nugget of gold the Yanomani people gave to your mother on your parents’ first trek into the rainforest, isn’t it?’

‘How? How could you know?’

‘Because he told me, Rose.’ The sorceress grinned triumphantly. ‘He told me all of those things.’

Rose shook her head, blinking furiously. How could it be true? The man she’d seen under the tree couldn’t even have told her his own name.

‘Sweet Rose. Wouldn’t he be pleased to know you’re still brave as
The Wolf-Cub Who Waited In The Snow
? That
was
the name of the book he was reading to you, wasn’t it, the week before he left to come out here?’

‘Stop it!’ Rose almost screamed.

Somewhere in the darkness a baby began to cry.

‘I brought him back!’ hissed Medea. Standing up, she ran a hand through the violet streak in her hair. ‘For a short while he was the father you knew again. Then,’ she snapped her fingers over her head, ‘he was gone. Blown away again like a leaf on the wind. But the cure could be permanent if you help me.’

‘Help you?’ Rose sank back, appalled.

‘Oh, Rose. You know you already have the talent to
be a fabulous sorceress. Why not use it to heal your father?’

‘No!’

‘Why ever not? Back in London, you couldn’t wait to try out some magic. You were so keen to become my assistant and maybe learn a few tricks. But now, now you have a great big problem that desperately needs your skills and you’re just going to give up!’

‘It was different then,’ protested Rose, feeling a flood of shame at the memory. ‘I had no idea of how vicious you were then! What you were capable of!’

Medea leaned closer. Her breath was warm and smelled of honey.

‘We’re talking about
your
magic! Not mine. Magic that can bring your father back to you.’ She paused, and breathed deeply. ‘And all you need to do in return is be my partner for a few days.’

Rose reeled back, horrified at the suggestion. It was so astonishing, so ridiculous, so downright outrageous, it might actually have been funny if it hadn’t been quite so repulsive. Help the woman who’d used the Fleece to try and kill Hazel? Who’d already murdered so many innocent people? Who’d tried to destroy Aries for a new coat of magical gold?

‘Just a teensy bit of help, that’s all,’ said Medea. She held out her hand, her finger and thumb bracketing a tiny distance. ‘Teensy weensy! You see, thanks to your meddling little friends, I no longer have any real power
for my magic. No Fleece,’ she shrugged, ‘no magic. Which would have been a tragedy worthy of
Euripides
himself, except that there’s something even more spectacular out here in the jungle.’ Rose watched the sorceress’s eyes gleam like cold stars in the twilight of the hut. ‘Something wonderful that could totally transform my sorcery. But, you see, I can’t seize it all by myself. I need the help of another sorceress.’ She turned back to Rose, smiling thinly. ‘And that’s you.’