Rampage! (5 page)

‘It leads into the capital of Amazonia,' said Rose finally. ‘Manaus.'

‘Manaus?' Hazel brightened. ‘Then why don't we take a couple of weeks there? I've heard it's like a cross between London and Las Vegas! We could take a girly break from all this jungle stuff. Enjoy us some serious pampering. What d'ya think?'

Rose bit her lip and looked down. Once it would have sounded so tempting. If only it had been just a holiday, of course she'd have loved to explore the city, shopping beneath its silver skyscrapers, swimming at its beaches and visiting the opera house that Eduardo had told her about, the one built by Victorians in the rubber boom, all pink walls and a spangling roof of gold, green
and yellow, that shone like a fairy tale palace in the middle of the jungle.

But how could she waste two weeks in Manaus?

Or even two days?

Or two minutes?

When every second of it was more time that her father would be out there, somewhere, lost in the jungle.

Seeing Hazel's expectant face, Rose bit her lip. ‘Maybe on the way back,' she said. ‘Because we'll have to go north to reach Tatu Village and find my father, long before the Amazon reaches Manaus.'

And then, thought Rose, leave the
Tucano
to travel the rest of the way by canoe and foot. She pushed the thought away, knowing that now absolutely would not be the time to remind Hazel about that.

‘I do understand,' said Hazel, leaning forward and cupping her face in her hands. ‘And I can't wait for you two to be back together again either. So, why don't I hire us a man to go into the jungle instead? Y'know, a native tracker to find your daddy for us?'

Rose shook her head and turned back to look at the river. ‘I can't wait around for someone else to do it,' she murmured. ‘And I won't be parted from him for a second longer than I have to be. I'm going to find him myself.'

The pictures in the scrying bowl vanished in a twist of smoke.

But Medea had seen enough.

Because even without hearing their conversation it
was perfectly clear how badly things were going. Feeling a fizz of excitement, she clapped her hands together, delighted to see Rose, the same earnest, serious girl she remembered, and Hazel, who looked like she'd sucked a lemon.

‘Oh my!' drawled Medea, mimicking Hazel perfectly. ‘I just love a-travellin' an' seein' the world! All those amazin' new things to discover!' she laughed.
From a mightily safe distance, of course
, added her mind spitefully. The sort of mightily safe distance, say, that you found between the back seat of a limousine and the gritty street outside or from your hotel penthouse down to the city several floors below.

Or from a luxury riverboat just far enough away from that squirming, scurrying, slithering jungle across the water.

Suddenly knowing what to do, Medea turned away from the pot and all but skipped to her steamer trunk without even glancing out of the window to indulge her favourite view. One that I'm sorry to say wasn't the majesty and spectacle of the jungle. Not as breathtaking as a soaring kapok tree or as sizzling as a scarlet orchid. Not even so much as a bad-tempered macaw with droopy blue feathers on its bottom. And to be honest, I'm not even sure I should tell you about it, what with things about to become extremely horrible, you'll probably only run away.

What's that?

You won't?

OK.

But perhaps I'll better build up to it gently just in case …

Outside the window of Medea's hut was a beautiful
barrigona
tree, a palm with a swollen trunk, which was home to a whole family of cheeping blue budgerigars that hopped along its frondy branches every morning.

Tweety-tweet tweet!

How charming.

What d'you mean, ‘Get on with it, grandma?'

All right then, but don't say I didn't warn you, because beneath that bounce of budgies was a European man. Haggard and wrinkled beyond his years, he sat hunched against the base of the tree, his bony knees, sun-blistered and poking through his ruined trousers, drawn up beneath his chin. Around him the bowls of armadillo stew and gourds filled with fruit juice that the villagers brought him lay forgotten as he stared into the brown water of the nearby creek.

But, like I said, Medea couldn't savour a single second of that today, nor even congratulate herself yet again on just how well she'd hidden him (using her obscurity spell) from that pesky magazine crew who'd badgered her for hours, because she was far too busy. And now, with her mind as fluttery as a cave full of bats, she dropped to her knees and threw back the trunk lid, plunging her hands down, down, through layers of jungle socks and cotton tops, mosquito nets and malaria pills, frantically scrabbling about the base until her fingers touched something smooth,
hard and familiar. A moment later, she drew out an object wrapped in blue silk and hastily unwrapped it to reveal a solid gold wrist cuff. Egyptian, and over three thousand years old, it would have been the star exhibit in any museum in the world, but it was worth much, much more to Medea.

Now as you already know, without the Golden Fleece, Medea's magic was about as impressive as a light bulb in a power cut. However, she'd hardly be the most successful, wicked, grimly spectacular sorceress in the history of the entire world if she hadn't thought ahead and planned for just such a magical emergency, would she? Which made this ancient piece of gold jewellery the equivalent of her box of candles under the stairs. A special something saved for those crucial moments in a sorceress's life when her down-at-heel magic simply won't do.

Now, holding it up in the sunlight, she watched its buttery surface twinkle as sunlight glanced off its engraved falcon-and crocodile-headed gods. Sighing, she felt her mind drift back almost a hundred years to Cairo and the sand-blown Valley of the Kings to the excavation of the pharaoh's burial site led by Howard Carter and his friend, Lord Carnarvon. She closed her eyes, conjuring up Carnarvon in her mind, so dapper in the cream linen suit she'd made for him, nodding back to her as he'd stepped into the black mouth of Tutankhamun's tomb.
17

But there was work to do. Giving herself a quick mental shake, she stood up and turned to the shelves, lifting down an ornate wicker box with a brass catch shaped like a dragon's face, its snout clasping a shining blue stone. Setting it down on the worktable, she heard a scuttling from inside and felt her fingers tingle with pure nastiness.

Because with just one blast of full-strength sorcery, courtesy of that gorgeous Egyptian bangle, that little Texan fly in the ointment would to be out of the way for good.

Leaving Rose utterly alone.

V

G
REEKS
B
EARING
G
IFTS

Meanwhile, down in the Underworld, Alex and Aries were ankle and hock-deep in the cold, salty water of the Cave of Acheron. Squinting in the grey light of the cavern, Alex was trying to make sense of the map he’d torn from Persephone’s magazine whilst Aries was chewing on a clump of rather tasteless seaweed and considering whether the low tide would give him foot rot, which given the day he’d already had would just about put the tin lid on things.

The cave, in case you’re wondering, is the place where the rocky barrier between the Underworld and the Earth is at its thinnest. Back in Ancient Greece, the place was a sort of drippy drop-in for heroes like
Odysseus
, who’d pop in for a chinwag with a clever ghost. Of course, in those days the River of Pain had gushed through it, a river well-named as far as Persephone was concerned, what with all those bad-tempered carp and snappy eels, so you won’t be surprised to hear that she’d drained it (more or less) and fixed some cheery iron torches into its walls. More importantly, however, she’d used its closeness to Earth to install her own set of royal portals. Not for her the grubby
old way back that Alex and Aries had used in the summer. What? Trudge through the Desert of Disappointment in her best holiday sandals? Cross the River Styx in a creaky boat filled with cave spiders? I think not.

Anyway, don’t distract me. The thing is, for Greek portals to work they need to supernaturally connect with Ancient Greece’s lost treasures, those old pots and columns and splinters of shield that were left back on Earth and transmit their energy back to the Underworld like satellites from space. Luckily for Persephone and her vacations, such treasures have long been scattered across the globe by armies and archaeologists, collectors and curators. And so, with the help of the ghost Greek engineers and a goodly dollop of godly magic, the queen now had her own network of shortcuts, quickly linking Hades’ palace to cities on Earth as easily as a hotel lobby leads to its bedrooms.

The portals were arranged in five rows, carved high into the cave walls. Each row was reached by its own boardwalk, edged by a guardrail and festooned with stripy blue bunting, leading to a long flight of steps, damp and glistening, carved out of the rock.

On any other day Alex would have loved to explore what lay behind each portal door, shining beneath the exotic names painted above them, names like Marrakech, Paris, Tokyo and Rome. But this wasn’t any other day and, already changed into the jeans and white T-shirt that Rose had found for him in the lost-property room of the British Museum back in the summer, he felt restless to leave.

Not that Jason was quite ready yet.

‘Just look at them,’ muttered Aries.

Quickly stuffing the map into his pocket, Alex glanced up to see the Argonaut, who was also dressed in jeans and a T-shirt (lovingly made by the palace seamstresses) framed by the arch of the cave’s mouth. Leaping over a patch of damp sand, he twirled and jabbed a stick of driftwood in a mock swordfight with Persephone and the other goddesses. Even Hera, queen of the gods and the wife of Zeus himself (and who Alex thought must be at least three thousand years old and should’ve known better) stood tilting her face up to him, beaming.

‘If we could make a start!’ cried Athena, straining to be heard over the chorus of giggles as the Argonaut spun round and tapped each of the goddesses’ noses in turn with the tip of the stick.

Aries snorted impatiently and Alex reached down to rub the ram’s head. It felt hot with anger and Alex sighed, knowing how hard it would be for the ram to return to Earth with Jason in charge. Of course, Alex had no more time for Greek heroes than Aries did. He hated all that swagger and bluster too, and the way that everyone went weak at the knees for a flash of armour or an arm bulging with biceps. But since the summer and what had happened in London, he’d been surprised to find himself feeling a little bit different and, frankly, rather curious about how the famous quests had actually been done. And despite his best friend’s frustration, he still couldn’t quash his own growing excitement at returning to Earth. Of course he was fiercely determined
to protect Rose from whatever Medea was planning, but he was quietly thrilled too, delighted to be on another adventure, and he thought that maybe this time, in going back to Earth with Jason, he’d have a chance to learn how the heroes always managed to win – a sort of boot camp to find out how they planned and thought, fought and stayed brave even when things were terrifying.

Not that he’d be mentioning that to Aries any time soon.

Obviously.

Alex watched the goddess of wisdom as she turned away from the little group, slipped off her sandals and scooped up her skirts, to walk into the cave. Her owl swooped in behind her, as bright as a snowball in the gloom, and nestled on her shoulder, twittering, as she waded towards them through the water. A flurry of maids splashed after her and quickly stacked an assortment of strange things on a nearby ledge, jutting out from the glistening wall. She waited for them to finish, curtsey and hurry away again, and then, stepping up on to a low flat-topped rock, she set the statue of Nemesis down on top of everything else.

‘Jason!’ she barked and slapped her shield with a resounding clang.

Glancing over, Jason flung down the driftwood and, offering an arm each to Euterpe, the muse of music, and Aphrodite, goddess of love, escorted them inside, stumbling and giggling, to look at the strange display.

Of course, it’s traditional for Greek heroes to take a
magical gift or two on their quests – a pair of winged sandals perhaps, or a cape of invisibility – but usually they don’t take quite so many. But then, you see, unlike Alex and Aries, who’d left the Underworld with only the All-Knowing Scroll and the gift of tongues,
18
it seemed that every other goddess wanted to give Jason something to help him on his special quest, too. And since we don’t have time for a proper rummage now, let me quickly tell you that already heaped up were:

Staring at the odd assortment, Alex felt twitchier than ever, restless to leave. Time, you see, passes a lot more quickly up on Earth and he knew that whilst only a few hours had passed since he and Aries had left the zoo, above them days were flashing past, days where Rose was drawing closer and closer to Medea.

Meaning they should be going.

Right now.

Around him, the goddesses’ giggles continued to echo around the rocky walls and he felt a spark of annoyance as he saw Euterpe stepping forward and realised they hadn’t even finished yet.

‘The Lyre of
Orpheus
,’ said the muse of music,
pulling a small golden instrument from her satchel. She strummed its strings lightly, filling the cave with its thin bird-like notes. ‘Made from magical adamantine, it will withstand the roughest voyage, soothe raging beasts and bring sweet harmony to any group.’

Sweet harmony, thought Alex. He glanced at Aries, who was glowering at Jason, who was scowling back, and felt his heart sink. Even for a godly gift, it was a big ask from a small harp.

‘Me next!’ squealed Aphrodite.

Sweeping all the other gifts out of the way, the goddess laid a roll of sapphire velvet on the rock.

‘My
pot pourri
of love and desire,’ she said, fluttering her eyelashes.

Aries groaned loudly as the goddess unfurled the bundle to reveal a cluster of delicate pink petals, each crystallized and twinkling with sugar.

‘Passionflowers,’ she explained, ‘coated with my special love elixir. Slip one into Medea’s food and she’ll melt the moment she sees you. I mean, she will anyway, but …’ She paused, making a small
moue
with her rosebud mouth.

‘But what?’ prompted Jason in a gooey voice.

‘Oh, Jason,’ she sighed. ‘You will come home quickly, won’t you? I mean, you haven’t forgotten it’s my birthday at the end of the week?’

‘How could I?’ said Jason. He held a petal playfully to his lips and gazed into her eyes. ‘Shall I test them?’

‘No!’ squeaked Aphrodite, plucking it from his fingers.
‘Just one nibble and you’ll be hopelessly in love with the very next person you see.’

‘Impossible,’ cooed Jason, ‘when I’m forever in love with you.’

‘You are?’ said Aphrodite, delighted.

‘Of course he’s not!’ barked Hera, barging forward and pitching Aphrodite sideways into the surf with a wallop of her hips. ‘Never mind all that lovey-dovey stuff,’ she went on, turning to the scabbard hanging from a belt on her dress and slowly drawing out a wide double-edged sword. ‘This belonged to
Achilles
!’

‘Achilles?’ said Jason.

His eyes lit up as he took the leaf-shaped sword from her and expertly twisted it in the air, its blade glinting like a swarm of fireflies in the flickering torchlight. The goddesses stared adoringly. And even Alex, who was desperately willing them to hurry up and stop sighing like
harpies
with tail sag, felt a sharp twinge of admiration, imagining what it must be like to be that confident, that sure of yourself. More than that, his mind added, for everyone else to be so sure of you too.

‘Ladies!’ Jason smiled broadly and laid the sword down with the other gifts. ‘You’ve all been so generous, but,’ he turned down his lip in regret, ‘much as I’d love to stay here with you, I think it’s time we loaded up the beast of burden!’

‘Beast of bur––!’ spluttered Aries, whose voice was immediately lost under a ringing slap as Artemis walloped him on the rear.

Ignoring his furious cry, she dragged a tangle of ancient leather straps and buckles from her bag. ‘I thought this might be useful,’ she smiled, holding out the crackled old harness from her chariot of nightfall.

Back in old Greece it had been her evening duty to draw the moon over the sky in her chariot, pulled by two magnificent stags. Now, even from where he stood, Alex could see how grubby the harness was, stained with sweat and deer doo doo. But before even Aries could complain – which gives you some idea of just how fast she was – her hands had buckled the heavy bellyband under Aries’ stomach, secured its back strap along his spine and tightened the breeching around his rear.

Aries grimaced, jutting out his lower jaw as the others hurried to tuck the gifts into the leather strapping on either side. Fingers fluttered all over him; cold metal and tickly feathers twitched his skin; giggles rang loudly in his head.

‘I’ll take that,’ smiled Jason, plucking the purse of infinite wealth from the last saddlebag and tucking it into his back pocket. Grinning, he gazed round at the goddesses. ‘After all, I’ll need something to buy you all souvenirs of my trip!’

As the others laughed and clapped, Alex looked over the gifts and, feeling a fresh stab of worry, turned to Athena.

‘We’ll need something to protect us against the sorceress,’ he said.

‘Protect us?’ laughed Jason. ‘But that’s my job!’

Feeling his face grow red with embarrassment, Alex looked back at the loaded harness. Perhaps lyres and thunderbolts, horse-feather fans and love potions had their uses on a quest (although being a thirteen-year-old boy he had seriously big doubts about the last one), but didn’t the goddesses understand?

They were going back to Earth to face
Medea
.

‘Alex does have a point,’ said Athena finally.

Alex glanced up to see her smiling indulgently at Jason.

‘After all, we don’t know what she’s up to in the jungle and we want you back safe with us.’ Solemnly, she stepped forward and set her aegis down on the rock. ‘That’s why I’ve decided to lend you this.’

Everyone gasped. Eyes grew wide in the grey light. Even Alex felt his breath catch as he stepped forward for a closer look.