Aesop's Secret (8 page)

Harmony Melpot smiled as she replaced a small picture of a man into the top drawer of her desk, looking up as Professor Mulligan marched into her office. “Please, come in,” she said tersely.

Professor Mulligan looked more disheveled than usual. “There’s no change, I’m afraid,” he said, shaking his head. “Horace has talked with the doctors and has secured Felix’s release from the hospital.”

“If there’s no change,” Harmony said hotly, “then why is Horace arranging for his release?”

“You didn’t let me finish,” Mulligan wheezed. “Since Felix is still in a coma, and doesn’t appear to be worsening, Horace has arranged to have the boy moved back into his house. That way, when his parents and sister arrive, they’ll be together; after all, the boy’s father is a doctor.”

Harmony seemed to ponder this for a few seconds. “Do the doctors at the hospital have any idea what is wrong with him?” she asked, tapping her fingers on the desk.

Mulligan shrugged his bulky shoulders. “They don’t know for sure, but they’re guessing that he’s had a rather serious reaction to an insect sting.”

Harmony raised a single eyebrow and leaned forward over her desk. “That’s what I assumed when I found him lying in the grass…there was a tiny red mark on the back of his neck, like a bee sting.”

Mulligan nodded. “I actually didn’t come in here to discuss his diagnosis. As the teacher in charge of his dorm, I simply wanted you to know about Horace’s plans.”

Harmony’s eyes narrowed. “Of course,” she said curtly. “Horace has everything under control.”

Felix would have smiled if he could have when his father lifted his eyelids. He had heard his voice, along with his mother’s and sister’s, when they came into the room. It was wonderful to see their faces, even if only for a second or two. After Jake had finished examining Felix’s eyes, he closed the lids again, returning Felix to the blackness that he had become accustomed to over the last few days.

It wasn’t an uncomfortable feeling, but it was one that Felix wouldn’t have chosen. He was in a state of absolute relaxation. He didn’t feel any pain but he did feel. In fact, he felt everything from the touch of a hand to the jab of a needle. He could hear and, if someone would open his eyes for him, he was able to see, too. The truth of the matter was that even though he was totally paralyzed, he was comfortable. In fact, he had never been so comfortable. He couldn’t move a muscle, not even to open his eyes, and for some strange reason he didn’t mind. It was like he was in a state of suspended animation where he knew that the world was functioning around him but was not terribly interested in taking part.

The last few days had been very strange. It seemed only an instant after he had fallen onto the grass that Dr. Melpot found him. He had thought about standing up but he couldn’t. He tried to speak but he couldn’t. He had no idea how he had gotten into such a state and he didn’t care.

He was glad to be back in Stumpworthy’s house, having not enjoyed the stay at the hospital very much. Being examined by all those doctors left him feeling like he was nothing more than a specimen to poke and prod, much like the unfortunate toads from his biology class. He was glad his father had arrived. He felt confident that he wouldn’t be subjected to any more of the hospital’s dehumanizing examinations―and maybe, he thought, the daily jabs in the back of his neck would stop.

Melinda stayed with Felix when her mother and father left the room with Professor Stumpworthy. She walked over to his bed, lifted his eyelids and stared into his eyes. “You’re OK, aren’t you?” she smiled, feeling certain that he was. The way the adults had been talking she thought that she would look into an unseeing gaze, but Felix’s eyes were full of life. They didn’t move or respond in any way, but Melinda was sure that he could see.

She smiled, reached up and pulled the big hat off her head, revealing long, pink, floppy rabbit ears. “I got rid of the pink eyes and whiskers,” she giggled, grabbing hold of her ears and pulling them out to the side, “but I’ve had these ever since Aesop ran away. Mum makes me wear that hat all the time now.”

Felix would have laughed if he could have. Before he came to Paris, the sight of his sister in this state would have unnerved him, but now it didn’t matter and actually seemed funny.

Melinda looked around the room, noticing it for the first time. The massive four-poster bed faced tall windows that overlooked the garden. To the left was the door that led out to the hallway; the room was dominated by a beautiful marble fireplace. The wall it faced had a huge dark brown antique armoire in the centre with modern paintings on either side; Melinda wondered if one of them was a real Picasso. On one end of that wall was a doorway leading into a walk-through closet, then into a private green marble bathroom. “Wow, Felix, this place is awesome. Your room is bigger than our whole upstairs in Seattle.” She turned back to face him, still holding his eyelids open. “I wish you could tell me what happened to you. Then maybe we could figure out how to make you better.”

Felix was so relaxed, he wondered if he even cared.

Harmony Melpot waited at Terminal 1 at Charles De Gaulle Airport. She was early, having arrived a full hour before the flight was due to land. Time moved incredibly slowly. She felt that she had been waiting for days. She smiled, thinking that in a way she had been; it had been three days since she’d received the phone call that had changed her life.

Harmony’s eyes seemed to smile as she searched the passengers’ faces, wondering if he would still look like the image in the faded photograph that she clutched tightly in her hand. Her heart leapt when any tall, dark-haired man walked into the arrivals hall, but he wasn’t among them. Fewer passengers were coming into the terminal now; it was down to a trickle of mostly elderly or disabled people. She wondered if she had only imagined the whole thing, if he wasn’t coming. She looked down at her feet, blinking wildly as she tried to stop the tears that were beginning to cloud her vision.

“Harmony,” a man’s voice said flatly. “New haircut?”

Harmony looked up into his handsome face. “New as of five years ago.” She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly. “What took you so long?” She pushed away and looked at him eagerly. “You don’t look like a rabbit,” she smirked.

He smiled happily. “If you want, you can still call me Aesop―I’m used to it after all these years. Although, I must admit that I prefer Joe.”

Harmony drove out of the airport car park, listening to her uncle’s explanation of what had happened to him more than six years ago. “I knew it!” Harmony shrieked proudly.

Joe looked at his niece with a raised eyebrow. “You knew about the virus?”

She glanced at him briefly, then returned her attention to the road. “No, of course not, but I was convinced that Horace was behind your death.” She paused, then laughed, “I mean disappearance. Mulligan hates me for thinking that way.”

Joe shrugged. “I thought Horace and I were good friends
—if the circumstance was reversed and it was Mulligan who had disappeared, I wouldn’t have blamed Horace either. Of course, James Mulligan is human, so I don’t know what effect the virus has on them.” He thought about that for a few seconds, than continued, “After Horace injected me with the virus, I began to transform into all sorts of animals until my body settled into the form of a rabbit. Afterward, Horace explained how the virus works. An Athenite has the natural ability to fight the effects by spontaneously transforming into a creature that has immunity. It can be anything, and for some reason, for me, it turned out to be a rabbit. The effects are meant to be permanent but, as you can see, they weren’t.”

Harmony glanced at him briefly. “What happened to bring you back to being you?”

Joe shrugged. “Science is your field, not mine
—maybe you can tell me.”

Harmony smiled. “I’ll work on it.” She thought for a minute, then looked nervously at her uncle. “Do you think that Mulligan is involved?”

Joe shook his head. “No, Horace hates humans as much as he doesn’t care for Athenites who might upset his cozy little setup. The man has made his fortune by using his abilities to manipulate people. Mulligan has never represented a threat and has been a useful source of information because of his scientific and business connections.

“I became a threat when I discovered those hieroglyphs in Turkey,” Joe explained. “Those writings could not only prove our ancestral existence, but also prove Athenites had once lived openly in human society. Disclosing that to the world would have changed the
course of history, taking mythology out of fantasyland.”

Harmony looked baffled. “I don’t understand why Horace would be so opposed to the idea. What difference would it make to him?”

“Horace has only been interested in two things since leaving university,” Joe snarled. “Power and money. Two things that he has attained only because of his Athenite abilities.”

“I still don’t understand,” Harmony said.

Joe leaned his head back against the seat and sighed. “Horace is fortunate to have the same talent that you have in your ability to understand all animal languages. You are not able to transform, but you can still call upon animal strengths, as well as communicate with any species at any time. Horace has that gift of communication too, and he can transform. For more than twenty years he has used both of those talents to make himself very rich. He would first transform into something most people might not notice, like a fly, then he would sneak into a meeting where important confidential information was being discussed about what businesses were up to. He used that information to choose his investments in the stock market, which made him an absolute fortune. That type of activity is considered highly illegal, and if the authorities ever found out that’s how he made his money, not only would his personal wealth be wiped out but he could go to prison for a very long time.”

Harmony nodded, then shook her head. “Just because people would know about Athenites would not necessarily mean that everyone would have to live openly. After all, we don’t even know who is and who isn’t an Athenite.”