Fleeced (3 page)
Authors: Julia Wills
Despite their grand name, the Skeleton Soldiers were little more than muddles of bones planted in beds of yellow roses in a garden close to the Tropical House. Grown from dragons’ teeth
6
centuries ago on Kolkis, they had burst out of the ground,
six-foot-tall
skeletons in armour, soil spilling from their helmets and cascading through their rib cages, swishing their swords to kill Jason before he could snatch the fleece. And they would have. Except that Medea had snitched and told Jason how to destroy them. (Look, I’ve told you before. I am
not
going to talk about her until I absolutely have to. You know where to look if you’re going to be so nosy.)
Unlike the rest of the zoo, the Skeleton Soldiers were anything but subdued. In fact, even before Alex turned the corner of the Avenue of Arcadia into the garden he could hear them chattering wildly, the sound of their clacking jawbones punctuated by the wild ringing of swords.
“No wonder it’s all anyone can think about,” muttered one as Alex skidded into the garden.
“What is?” said Alex.
He looked down at the skull, which was perched on a criss-cross of hipbones and set on a ribcage planted in the soil. The other bone warriors turned their skulls to look at Alex. Not one was higher than Alex’s waist and most were only knee high. This was because, after Jason’s handiwork, the soldiers had turned up at the zoo in three boxes of bones. And despite Alex’s and Aries’ best efforts to put them back together again, it’d been rather like doing a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing and no picture on a box lid to help.
“Tonight’s competition, of course,” replied a skull attached to a rib cage. To make up for the lack of legs, Alex had given him four arms, each of which now whirled a sword in the air, lopping off roses and sending them spiralling over the grass. “It’s outrageous! Sending another hero
swaggering back to Earth! No doubt some poor unsuspecting monster’s number will be up. Is it any wonder everyone’s in such a terrible mood?”
For the next few minutes, teeth rattled, finger bones clenched and knuckles cracked as the bony warriors told him all about Athena’s planned festivities and the competition.
“As if Jason’s lot didn’t do enough damage the first time round!” grumbled a skull on shoulder bones with fingers where his arms used to be. “Why, if I had my legs back, I’d enter the assault course myself!”
“Have one of mine,” muttered a ribcage flexing up and down on three legs, with a skull where one of his kneecaps had been. “Thanks to him I have to hide every time someone mentions playing cricket!”
“We’d have beaten him if his girlfriend hadn’t helped him!” said the four-armed skull, spinning his swords even faster.
“Don’t talk about Medea,” said a little skull set on a lone foot, peeking out from under a nearby branch of rose leaves.
(See? It’s not just me.)
Alex leaned forwards on the sun-warmed bench and rubbed the cranium of the frightened skull.
“Don’t worry about her,” he soothed. “The gods will never let her into the Underworld. With her
record, she’ll be stuck up on Earth forever.”
The little skull sighed with relief.
Alex, however, was feeling distinctly uneasy because whilst all the monsters were fuming and unhappy, he was sure that there would be one person who’d be thrilled at any chance of going back up to Earth.
“Has anyone seen Aries this afternoon?” he asked.
The garden rasped with the scraping of finger bones against skulls as the soldiers thought. In the quiet, Alex heard a distant pounding of hooves, a pounding that grew steadily closer, until a few seconds later Aries barrelled into the garden.
“Alex! I’ve got something important to tell you!”
“He already knows,” said the skull on hipbones.
“Excellent,” gasped Aries, his face flushed pink with excitement. “That’ll save time!”
“Time for what?” said Alex.
“My training!” replied Aries. “For the assault course!”
Skulls squealed round on their bone supports. Jawbones fell open. A sword flew out of the
four-armed
soldier’s grasp and stabbed a clump of lavender.
“Well, I can see you’re impressed!” Aries smiled at Alex’s astonished face and slammed a hoof against the path for effect. “Let’s make a start!”
Snapping off a branch of a nearby jacaranda tree, Aries began jabbing at the air. “There might be sword fighting,” he muttered out of one side of his mouth. “And spear throwing. Alex, you’ll need to give me some tips on improving my aim!”
“Aries,” said Alex, gently taking the branch from the ram’s mouth. “I don’t think this is such a good idea. I mean, the soldiers tell me the course is the trickiest set of obstacles since Herakles did his
twelve labours
? It’s designed for the Argonauts.”
“I know that!” Aries rolled his eyes impatiently. “That’s why I need your help! I have to be the one to win. No one wants to go back to Earth on a quest more than I do! Now, listen. You were always doing assault courses with your dad. What do you suggest?”
Alex winced at the memory of wading through rivers and swinging on ropes in a tunic sopping with muddy water. It had been gruelling enough as a boy with arms and legs. For a ram, with four hooves and a belly like a barrel, it would be impossible. Worse still, Alex knew it would be laughable. Just imagining tonight’s spectators, cruel and gleeful, shrieking with laughter as they watched Aries struggle and fail, made his heart lurch.
“I suggest we go and watch the others make fools of themselves instead,” replied Alex brightly. “Have a
laugh when Herakles pitches head first into the mud.”
Aries pursed his lips and stared at Alex.
“What he’s trying to say,” said the skull with three legs, “is that the assault course isn’t meant for sheep.”
“Sheep?” Aries swung his head round and glared darkly at the skull. “Me? Aries Khrysamallos? You’re calling me a
sheep
?” He lifted his muzzle into the air and regarded the other bone soldiers haughtily. “Do I eat grass all day? Or stare gormlessly into space for hours? Drop steaming pats in fields?”
“I don’t know,” said the skull on hipbones. “Do you?”
“No, bonehead!” boomed Aries. “I do not! You’re confusing me with those woolly brained four-legged carpets that loiter behind gates going ‘baaa’!”
“What about parping?” asked the three-legged skull.
Aries fixed him with a steely glare.
“Pardon me, I’m sure,” muttered the skull.
Aries threw back his head defiantly. “Sheep may share a few minor bodily similarities with me. However, you wouldn’t see one of them in tonight’s contest. And you wouldn’t see them returning to Earth on a quest either!”
“Oh, Aries,” sighed Alex. He reached out and stroked Aries’ hot forehead. “I can understand how
exciting this seems to you. But—”
“But nothing!” protested Aries. “I’m entering. It’s the only way I can get back to Earth and find my fleece. I’ve made up my mind!”
Unfortunately, rams have never been known for thinking things through logically. I mean, you never see them doing sudoku, do you? And they’re stubborn, too. As Alex knew only too well, once Aries made up his mind up about something, his determination was like a boulder rolling down a mountainside. It flattened everything in its path.
“Excuse me,” said a small voice. Alex looked down to see the skull on one foot prodding his sandal with a big toe bone. “But wouldn’t it be dangerous for Aries to go to Earth?”
“Well, of course it’d be dangerous, you numbskull!” said Aries before Alex could reply. He drummed the stone path with his hooves. “That’s the whole point of a quest, isn’t it? It’s not like popping down to the agora for a pot of olives!”
The other skulls laughed, filling the garden with the dry rattle of loose teeth and chuckling.
“Ancient Greece was dangerous enough,” said the four-armed skull, jabbing his swords into the air, “but I’ve heard there are hundreds of countries up there now!”
“And chariots without horses that belch out smoke!” added the skull on shoulder bones.
“Says who?” snipped Aries.
“The
oracles
,” replied the skull. “They’ve seen other things, too. Buildings as tall as the sky, metal ships that fly through the clouds, and—”
“Oracles poracles!” boomed Aries. “I’m the one who’s going, so you lot can just hold onto your clackers.” He rolled his head round, looking at each one of them in turn. “Unless anyone would like to come along too? You know, to sort out my bedding, do a bit of washing-up, find the juiciest thistles, that sort of thing?”
The skeletons that still owned kneecaps examined them. Others drummed their finger bones against their skulls and looked up at the cloudless sky.
“I would,” said one, pointing to his sockets, “but my eyesight’s not what it used to be.”
“And my arthritis,” added the skull on three legs, “would play merry havoc on a march!”
“Not to worry,” announced Aries brightly. “Because Alex will come with me!”
Alex stared, speechless, as Aries continued talking to the skulls.
Return to Earth?
He couldn’t think of anything more ridiculous
than leaving the safety of the Underworld to return to an Earth they’d no longer recognise.
“He’s my best friend,” Aries continued, “and, as you know, we’ve always been a team.” Looking back at Alex, the ram’s treacly brown eyes glittered with excitement. He poked Alex playfully with the tip of a horn. “Do you remember the time I fell into Hydra’s tank and you distracted her by tipping in a month’s supply of sardines so I could scramble out? Or when the Minotaur had you by the ankle and I distracted him by butting him up the—”
“Aries, stop it!” implored Alex.
Aries fell silent, his jaw slack, waiting for Alex to go on.
“Don’t enter,” said Alex more calmly. “Please?” He reached out and rested a hand on Aries’ shoulder. “Aren’t you happy enough down here? With us?” Neck bones creaked as the skulls listened, nodding sympathetically. “Helping me at the zoo?”
“But look at me!” snapped Aries hotly. “I’m bald! Bald and ridiculous. Don’t you understand? Every day people make fun of me!”
Alex hesitated, trying to choose his next words carefully. “But can’t you see that entering tonight’s race will only give them something else to laugh about?”
“They won’t laugh when I win!” said Aries. “A quest on Earth is my only chance to find my fleece. I can’t let it pass me by. Now, where were we? Ah, yes, you were about to give me some tips on assault courses.”
“No, I wasn’t,” said Alex. “Because I’m not going to help you make a fool of yourself.”
“But, Alex!” Aries snorted. “Nothing is more important to me than going back for my fleece!”
“Nothing?” said Alex, aware of a sudden tightness behind his ribs.
Aries thought hard for a moment. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “Nothing at all! That’s why I need your help!” Alex watched the ram’s eyes grow wider, sparkling with excitement. “Oh, come on, Alex! Don’t you remember what your grandfather used to say? That thing about pots and people?”
“That pots were like people,” Alex replied flatly, thinking back to his grandfather carrying a tray of wet freshly thrown clay pots across the studio in ancient Athens. “He said that you couldn’t tell how well they’d turn out until they’d been fired in the kiln.”
“Well then?”
“Well then, what?” muttered Alex. “Some pots shatter in the heat, Aries. I should know. I was
the one who had to sweep them up every evening. Sometimes it’s better not to go near the fire.”
“Well, that’s the spirit I must say!” huffed Aries. “Thank you very much!”
Around the garden, the skulls looked round at each other, their sockets gaping in shock.
“Come on,” said Alex, much more cheerfully than he felt. He stood up and reached out for Aries but the ram twisted his head away. “Look,” he persisted, “why don’t we go and do something fun instead! You know, cheer ourselves up a bit? We’ve still got the hippocampi to feed and you love doing that.”
The hippocampi were sea creatures with the heads and front legs of horses and the tails of fishes who’d once drawn Poseidon, the king of the sea’s, chariot. Now they dipped and dived like dolphins each day for the visitors who took the ferry around the lake and it was one of Aries’ favourite jobs to carry the bucket of sugar cubes and carrots down to the water, waiting for the creatures to rise up close to the banks, foaming and prancing.
“And I’ll pick you some olives as a treat when we’re finished,” added Alex, walking across the garden to the long white villa where the monster feed was stored. He slid the key in the lock. “We can go back home, set a little fire in the courtyard and
toast some rose hips to go with them. Forget about the party tonight. What do you say?”
There was no reply.
“Aries?” Alex looked back over his shoulder to see the ram standing on the same spot, staring gloomily at the ground.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to manage by yourself today,” said Aries.
He turned and began clopping back along the path, his hoof-falls slow and heavy. Pausing at the corner of the Tropical House, he looked back, his eyes dull with disappointment. “At least the Argonauts stood by Jason,” he said, sniffing loudly. “I’m sorry it’s come to this.”