Rampage! (17 page)

Aries blinked. Ahead of them, Jason was swinging the sword towards something white and oval, tucked out of his sight behind a bower of red flowers. The ram gaped as the boy threw himself forwards and grabbed Jason’s arm, tackling him to the ground, sending them both sprawling sideways into a bank of ferns.

‘What the ––?’ demanded Jason furiously.

‘That!’ said Alex, pointing above them.

In the eerie silence that now enveloped the jungle, Aries clopped through the undergrowth to join them. For a moment all three of them regarded what appeared to
be a gigantic paper lantern hanging overhead. It reminded Aries of the ones the ancient Athenians used to carry through the city streets to celebrate Athena’s birthday, only bigger. Its walls gleamed in the fading light, but unlike the goddess’s lamps it pulsed with dark shapes squirming inside. Now, in the stillness, Aries’ ears twitched anxiously, hearing a low angry buzzing from inside.

‘Killer wasps,’ said Alex, his voice thin with shock as he sat up and brushed the leaf litter off his shoulders. ‘I saw pictures of them in Hazel’s book.’

Aries felt a shiver of fear, watching as a single copper-coloured wasp, as long as a finger, landed on the skin of the nest and skittered around the rim.

‘They can sting a man to death in seconds,’ said Alex, reaching up to lace his hand around Aries’ neck. ‘Or a ram.’

Jason wiped his brow, visibly shaken.

‘That’s why we can’t keep arguing,’ said Alex, clambering back to his feet. ‘We have to start looking out for each other. Right?’

Behind him, Jason scowled, irritably shaking the leaf litter from his hair. At least until Alex turned round to face him, whereupon he switched on his dazzling smile and nodded in agreement.

‘Like a team,’ he said, playfully punching Alex on the shoulder.

XVIII

M
AGIC
M
OMENTS

Magic is much more exciting than sewing a superhero outfit for your dog, juggling eggs or making a pet dragon out of a toilet roll. And it’s way more thrilling than stringing one clay bead after another onto a piece of wire. Which Rose might have told you, if she hadn’t been, well, so busy stringing one clay bead after another onto a piece of wire.

A couple of hours after her lesson with Medea, she was sitting cross-legged, hot and horribly frustrated, surrounded by the other women from the village, in the
molucca
, trying to make Fair Trade necklaces. Snatching a glance out through the doorway, where she’d chosen to sit so that she could still see her father slumped beneath the tree, she blew her sticky fringe off her forehead and tried again to jab at the tiny red ball, only for it to slip through her fingers and shoot on to the floor to lie dismally with all the others. Next to her, a young woman in a printed shift dress looked up and smiled sympathetically, the sun glowing against her coffee-coloured skin as she handed the bead back again.

Rose forced a smile.

It was all very well, she grumbled inwardly, squinting at the minute hole in the bead, for Medea and Eduardo to agree with the chief that she’d help make Fair Trade earrings in return for staying in the village until she was stronger, but how on earth was she supposed to concentrate on something so dull and annoying after what she’d achieved that morning? Dazzled by her own magic, every bone in her body had ached to practise more, to use the remaining potion to try and turn Medea’s stuffed toad into one that would hop around the hut, or zap an iguana back into an egg. All of which made it feel like a punch in the stomach when the sorceress had then flatly refused to let Rose try anything else, because she said she had things of her own to do. Worse, she’d then promptly marched Rose over to the
molucca
, sorted a bowl of fish stew for her breakfast, sat her down with the other women in the jewellery workshop and then, half an hour later, stomped out of her hut, pink-faced, into the jungle.

Leaving Rose fretful and impatient, her mind crammed with squirming caterpillars and blue butterflies, with Egyptian bangles and tales of ancient Amazon chiefs dusted in gold and flipping over and again back to her last glimpse of the Reversal Potion, abandoned and glowing darkly in its clay bowl at the end of the bench, twinkling like an oasis in the desert.

Lifting her head, she sighed, watching her father trace patterns in the dust with his finger.

Then she focused her attention on the sorceress’s empty hut.

‘Rose Pottersby-Weir!’ She could almost hear her mother’s disgusted voice scolding her for even thinking of sneaking into someone else’s house when they were out.

She turned back to the beads, feeling more annoyed than ever, certain that trainee sorceresses didn’t follow the same rules as everyone else. For a moment, she wondered what Medea would have been like at her age. She couldn’t imagine her stringing necklaces patiently if her Aunt Circe had just shown her how to turn sailors into pigs. Sorceresses, she was sure, were never held back by nice manners and doing as they were told.
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Not when they were able to do far more spectacular things. Like sneaking in and using the leftover potion on their fathers.

Rose felt a jolt of pure excitement at the idea. Dare she? Actually creep into the deserted hut and steal it, together with the bangle, and go down to the creek? A sharp thrill of fear swept through her, jangling her nerves, and yet the idea remained, fizzing like a sparkler in her mind. Wasn’t it worth any risk to see her father’s smile, even if only for a few moments? Exhilarated and shocked, she could hardly believe that she was even thinking of such an awesome thing to do. But she still found herself flinging the beads into the pot and standing up anyway. Then, rubbing her hands, damp with nervous sweat, on her shorts, she picked her way through the other women,
stepped out of the hut and walked quickly over the dusty plaza towards Medea’s hut.

Thanks to the understanding spell, Medea’s obscurity charm, routinely flicked back on like a house alarm when she’d left the hut that morning, no longer worked on Rose. Now, stepping through the door, the pot was the first thing she saw, standing exactly where they’d left it earlier that day.

Me, I’d have noticed the scrunching noise, crumpling and crushing, like someone screwing up a big sheet of brown paper. Which is what Rose heard next, and discovered that it was coming from the branch, newly sprung from the table that morning, or, more accurately, the termites that now engulfed it. For a moment, she felt her stomach lurch at the sight of the squirming insects, thick as treacle, pouring over the fresh wood, the leaves and the glistening sap. Then she recalled Eduardo telling her that termites were kings of the rainforest, feasting daily on the leaf litter and wood, and felt her shock melt away, realising that it was hardly surprising that they’d been drawn indoors by a delicacy as rare as English oak.

Even so, she snatched up the remaining Reversal Potion as quickly as she could and carefully poured it into one of Medea’s flasks. Then, stoppering it tightly, she stepped back from the writhing edge of the table to scan the hut for the bangle.

The place looked just the same as when she’d walked out of it. The spell book lay open at the same page,
surrounded by a few spilled grains of sand and the crumpled phoenix feathers. The map had been rolled up neatly and left on top of the steamer trunk. Over in the corner, the brass pot gleamed in the sunlight, although Rose noticed that the peacock feather, which had earlier leaned against the wall, was now laid across its rim and there was a faint crackling sound from the coals beneath it, as if they’d been doused recently.

For the next few minutes, Rose searched the hut from top to bottom, rummaging through the sorceress’s trunk, checking each tangle of clothes in case the bangle lay hidden inside, smoothed out the folds of her hammock and peeped under the pillow at the top.

Nothing.

She dragged a stool out from under the table, gingerly brushed off a few termites and, setting it down under the shelves, quickly climbed up. Then she scoured each shelf in turn, inspecting pots and jars, squinting beneath the lids of clay jars and flipping open carved boxes. She found jags of old hoplite spears and obols with pictures of owls, dried black plants, beetle wings, three desiccated bats and a swatch of glittering twig that reminded her of Christmas decorations.

But no bangle.

Finally she snatched up the stuffed toad to check underneath it, fleetingly glad that it felt cool and dead, and sent the sloping row of books it’d been wedging on the shelf clattering to the floor.

Still nothing.

Shaking her head in dismay, Rose realised that the sorceress must have taken the bangle with her. Frustration welled up in her like steam in a geyser as she stepped down from the stool and stared at the mess of books. She reached for her locket and dragged it to and fro along its chain, thinking hard. What good was the potion without the bangle she needed to make it work? It was stupid, as useless and raw as cake mixture when you wanted a slice of Victoria sponge. She bit her lip, feeling the heat of her anger rising inside her. After all this effort, screwing up her courage to do something so daring and un-Rose-like as steal into someone’s house, she couldn’t believe she’d ended up with a big fat nothing. She slid the locket again, listening to it ratchet over the chain, and glared down at the books, doubtless filled with even more spells to answer any heart’s desire, unless it was for the gold that would make any of them work.

The thought was almost funny, except that she absolutely did not feel like laughing. Which was when she looked down her nose at the locket twinkling between her fingers. It was gold, wasn’t it? Hardly on a par with Medea’s bangle, of course, it certainly wasn’t Ancient Egyptian and Rose was pretty certain it hadn’t inspired anything so grand as a nation. But it had been special to the chief who’d given it to Rose’s mother, hadn’t it? Not made for a king like El Dorado, perhaps, but passed down as a lucky talisman through the tribe for generations. Didn’t that count for something? Make it a teensy bit beloved? More importantly, mightn’t it have just a gasp
of power to use on the potion? Rose had absolutely no idea, but then, she had no other gold either.

Galvanised, she dropped to her knees and quickly scooped up the books, grunting as she hefted them back on to the shelf. Quickly jamming the stuffed toad against them, she was about to leave when she noticed a small, rolled-up scroll lying beneath the table. Intrigued, she snatched it up and unwound it a little way, expecting to see more spells and diagrams. Instead, she was surprised to see a sketch of a Greek ship and columns of writing crammed across the pages. Water stains blurred some of the words and the parchment felt almost crusty, but now as she watched, underlined words melted into English: ‘Wednesday’, ‘Thursday’. Her curiosity prickled.

Clearly it must be somebody’s diary, she decided.

But whose?

The writing was haphazard and squashed in tightly winding lines, as though written quickly and in secret. Halfway down the third column, the word ‘Jason’ swirled into English, making the hairs on the back of her neck tingle. She watched, mesmerized, as more English words bobbed out of the tangle of Greek – ‘love’, ‘handsome’, ‘besotted’ – as inviting as shimmering flies on a fishing line, drawing her in despite her anxiety to leave the hut. Could it be Medea’s diary? Of course, the old Rose, the one who’d stepped into the jungle a few days before, would already have put the scroll back on the shelf, red-faced for even sneaking a peek. But then, that Rose wouldn’t have crept into someone’s empty house in the first place.
Now, as she watched, more words twisted into English, teasing her: ‘
to lovingly protect him with sorcery’
… Rose’s eyes widened, and she positively itched to read on. Except that, obviously, as she scolded herself, she absolutely shouldn’t. It was, as her mother might have told her, out of the question.

But her mother wasn’t there.

And besides, the scroll was sucking her in like quicksand.

Suddenly somewhere nearby a parrot shrieked madly, making Rose jump, and snapped from her indecision, she flipped up the scroll and stuffed it into her shorts pocket. Then, telling her flabbergasted conscience that of course she could return it without reading it properly, she snatched up the Reversal Potion and ran out of the hut.

In the middle of the Amazon day, everything feels hot and sleepy and now even the frenetic buzz of insects skittering over the river sounded little more than a murmur in Rose’s ears. Stepping into the dappled green light beneath her father’s tree, she briefly laid her hand on his shoulder, steeling herself as he flinched beneath her touch.

‘It’ll be all right, Dad,’ she whispered, curbing the unwelcome sensation that she was talking to herself.

Quickly checking that she couldn’t be seen by the women chatting under the shade of the mango trees on the far side of the village, she dipped her locket into the potion and shivered as a lick of blue smoke, spangled with
tiny grey stars, twisted from the neck of the flask. Spurred on, she drizzled a few drops of the liquid on to his head and jammed her eyes closed, forcing her mind away from the suffocating heat and the trickle of sweat running down her neck, willing herself to imagine what she wanted the spell to achieve. She cast her mind back, picturing him when he was well, the way he’d looked that day in April when he walked away from her and her mother towards the plane, turning back, waving, calling their names one last time. She scrunched her eyes tighter and tighter, conjuring up his face, hearing his laugh echo back as he boarded the plane with the others, and felt her whole body tremble as she compelled the magic to turn him back into the man he’d been before. Love curdled by desperation coursed through her, making her feel light-headed, almost as though she were floating, and when she heard his voice, for a moment she felt sure she was still creating it in her mind.

‘Rose?’

She flicked open her eyes, and started, astonished to see her father looking up at her. Bright and curious, he pawed at the liquid that now dribbled down his face.

‘Are you all right?’ He glanced at his purple-stained hands and grinned up at her, bemused. ‘What on Earth are you doing out here? Where’s your sunhat?’

‘Oh, Dad!’ Rose threw her arms around him and buried her face against his bony chest, hugging him so tightly that she could barely breathe. Tears of delight coursed down her cheeks, soaking his filthy shirt until
finally, reluctantly, she pulled back from him to look into his puzzled face.

‘What’s the matter, Rosy?’ he muttered, his eyes clouded with confusion. ‘How did you get here? Is your mother with you? James and the others will be so pleased to see you both. Do you know, we were only talking the other night at camp about the farewell meal we had at our house just before we flew out. That rubbery goose your mother cooked. Do you remember?’