Fleeced (5 page)
Authors: Julia Wills
Alex and Aries followed Athena and the other competitors to the scarlet starting ribbon that had been strung between two olive trees. Peering down through the pavilion gardens they could see the obstacles, each hung with lanterns that cast patches of light on the grass, patches that grew steadily dimmer as the course stretched away towards the flagpole at the finishing line.
“I can’t believe it!” growled Alex, squinting through the trees towards the first obstacle, a network of ropes, its top pegged with several peculiar objects, to the long narrow pipe lying flat on the grass beyond.
“Me neither,” said Aries, frowning. “Athena’s made it really different!”
Alex cast his eyes up at the starry sky. “I wasn’t talking about the obstacles, you great steaming dollop!” he said. “I meant the fact you still want
to enter. Anyway, what’s different about a climbing net? Unless there’s a ram tangled up in it?” He glanced at Aries’ belly and raised his eyebrows in dismay. “Or squeezing through pipes?”
“Has it occurred to you,” replied Aries dryly, “that despite your lack of support and help this afternoon, I might have a plan?”
Alex sighed, wondering what sort of plan could possibly help Aries now.
“Ladies and gentlemen and, er, rams!” Athena raised her voice as the Greek ghosts drifted out around her to take their places along the
roped-off
spectators’ areas. “I present the Earthbound Assault Course! The oracles have helped me create a competition full of the challenges our winner will face up on modern-day Earth.”
Curious whispers rippled through the crowd as everyone stared at the strange assortment of obstacles.
Which was hardly surprising. You see, the problem was that ever since the oracles’ eyesight had become too fuzzy to gaze into pots they’d taken up psychic ear trumpets instead. And at Athena’s request, they’d tuned these in through layers of rock and soil and buried dog bones to the sacred temple at Delphi. Or rather, the café built next to it where they’d used them
to listen to the chatter of tourists and reported back to Athena on exactly what they’d heard.
“I know it may look a little unusual,” said Athena. She snapped her fingers and a burly man in full armour stepped out of the crowd, jumped up onto the goddess’ owl-carved chariot, reined to a white horse, and drove it over to her and waited as she stepped up demurely behind him. “But don’t worry!” Reaching down, she unclipped a polished goat horn from the side of the chariot and held it to her lips. “Because I shall be giving you a running commentary to tell you about each obstacle as the first athlete reaches it, using this!” she said, her voice now ringing out through the trees. “Calling all competitors!”
“This is your last chance,” hissed Alex urgently. “You have to come home!”
“No!” snapped Aries. “Shan’t!”
At which Aries clamped his mouth tightly shut, feeling an overwhelming combination of annoyance with Alex, and puzzlement as to how indeed he might make it even over the first obstacle, let alone finish the whole course – and finish first too.
Whilst Alex felt a similarly overwhelming combination of annoyance with Aries, puzzlement as to why Aries remained so proudly stubborn mixed with the horrible certainty that it’d all end in disaster
anyway. So he closed his mouth too, leaving them both in an uncomfortable silence, lost in their own gloomy thoughts and taking what is proverbially known as ‘the hump’
10
.
Casting one last tight-lipped glance at Alex, Aries took his place between Theseus, who was busily clanking through his leg stretches, and Jason, who stood basking in the breeze that rippled his hair (a breeze, I might add, filled with the sighs and murmurs of lovesick ladies amongst the spectators).
Alex had by now, as you might imagine, had enough and stumped back around the pavilion to sit alone on its front steps, unable either to stay and watch people make fun of Aries or to leave him on his own.
Meanwhile back at the starting line, Athena leaned down from her chariot and reached for the ribbon.
“Ready?” She bounced up and down excitedly on the chariot.
“Steady?” Her voice was little more than a giggle.
“Go!”
There was a blare of trumpets as Athena snatched the ribbon away and the chariot thundered off down the course.
The crowd whooped.
Women flung rose petals into Jason’s path as he sped past in a blur of leopard-skin, neck and neck with Atalanta, who raced forwards, her head down, sleek as an otter slicing through water.
Theseus sprinted a split second behind them, his spear tilted forwards, his armour glinting in the lantern lights, just a footstep in front of Orpheus and Herakles.
And Aries?
Well, I’m afraid he had an unrivalled view of five Argonauts’ bottoms, bobbing up and down and growing smaller as they raced down the grass towards the first obstacle where Athena’s chariot was now pulling up.
“Earth people,” her voice drifted back, “love going on something called the Web! And so, we’ve spun one of our own!”
Aries thundered towards the Web, bemused at the criss-crossing ropes disappearing into the treetops overhead. Earth people, he decided, must be quite strange if they became so excited about such a thing.
“Now, according to Sybil,” Athena went on,
giving him a withering stare as he wheezed to a stop in front of her, “Earth people go onto the Web to find things ‘online’. So, tonight the competitors must choose one of the magical tools hanging up there on our line to take to Earth with them if they win.”
Aries looked overhead to see Jason and Theseus clambering to the top, swift as spiders, deftly picking their way over the ropes. A few seconds later Jason dropped softly onto the grass on the other side and, pushing his hand back through the ropes, waggled a golden key under Aries’ muzzle.
“This key will open every door on Earth to me!” he sneered before sprinting away.
Theseus landed next, but instead of racing after Jason he walked off the course and calmly sat down on a rock. Puzzled, Aries watched as the Argonaut slipped on the sandals he’d collected from the Web, stuck out his dusty feet and chuckled as wings unfurled from the sandal heels and began flapping like baby sparrows. Typical, thought Aries, realising that Theseus intended to fly over the remaining obstacles, and cheat, just like he had on the night he killed the Minotaur when the armour-plated trickster had found his way out through the labyrinth by following the trail of wool he’d laid on the way in.
Aries lurched up onto his hooves and waddled over to Atalanta, who was aiming an arrow at a dark green bottle tied between a scroll and a spade, and bumped her with his flank.
“Do you mind!” she growled, stumbling sideways.
Drawing back her arrow a second time, she narrowed her eyes to dark slits of concentration. Close by, Aries noticed Orpheus busily wedging the broad base of his lyre against a rock before wrestling its top into the lowest ropes of the Web. Then, straightening up, the musician tapped his foot against its strings to check their bounce and jogged backwards. Meanwhile, Herakles appeared to be cuddling a tree.
Aries stuck his chin up and nudged Atalanta’s elbow. “I’m going to win, you know!”
“You must be joking!” she muttered, as Orpheus sped past, bounced on his lyre and rose gracefully into the air.
“Not really,” said Aries and stamped on her bare toes, making four things happen ever so quickly:
- Atalanta shrieked and stumbled backwards, loosing her arrow blindly into the air, just as…
- Orpheus grabbed hold of the top of the Web with one hand and a scroll from online with
the other, just as… - Atalanta’s arrow spliced through the hem of his tunic, making a loud
Pt-chow!
and pinning him to the ropes, just as… - Actually, I’ve decided not to mention number 4 because I’ve remembered how you insisted on talking about pants at the start of this book. Obviously Orpheus wasn’t wearing any during the race and we are not going to dwell on his rude bits. Nor will there be any pictures. Black and white. Or colour.
“What the?” yelped Orpheus.
Spinning sideways and stuck like a fly in a cobweb, he was helpless to stop the scroll tumbling from his grasp, spiralling to the ground and landing at Aries’ hooves. Snatching it up, he stomped on towards the next obstacle, leaving a furious Atalanta clutching her throbbing foot.
Yay!
Aries!
Give me an A…!
Give me an R…!
What’s that?
Well of course I know they didn’t have cheerleaders
in the Underworld. I just felt that Aries deserved a bit of support after all that cleverness and so I was shaking my bootie for him. But you’re probably right. I ought to get back to telling you what’s happening.
Herakles roared his rumbling strongman’s bellow, which sent bats wheeling into the dark sky and wrenched the tree he’d been embracing out of the ground. Then, slamming it down, he plucked at its branches furiously until only a sharp-tipped tree trunk was left. This he hurled, like a woody home-made javelin, high into the Web, sending its tip whistling through the handle of the spade and bringing it down with a crash, narrowly missing Aries’ right ear as it speared a bank of blue rhododendrons.
“Spade!
11
” cried Herakles, powering past Aries with it tucked beneath his biceps.
Up ahead, Athena squealed excitedly down the goat horn.
“Jason’s through the Tube!” she cried, jumping up and down in her chariot.
A moment later Herakles thumped his meaty
fist against the pipe, delighted by the metallic echo that rang from the other end.
“Tube!” he said, rolling the word around his mouth like an olive stone.
“That’s right,” said Athena, speaking more slowly. “The oracles heard that Earth people use it to travel underneath their cities all the time.”
“Tube,” repeated Herakles, holding his ear to the pipe and chuckling.
Herakles, as you might have gathered from this, wasn’t the brightest buckle on an Argonaut’s tunic. Indeed, it’s probably fair to say that the muscle man was, well,
all
muscle: they bulged in his biceps, rippled across his shoulders and filled the space between his ears.
Meanwhile, Jason flashed a smile at Athena and sauntered away, sniggering. Sauntering, rather like sniggering, are things you only do in a race when you’re confident you’ll win, and catching sight of Jason’s smug face, Herakles threw himself into the pipe.
Clangs
and
thwacks
rang out as he thundered through, his spade hammering against the inside so that by the time he emerged from the other end, the pipe was pocked with dents and bumps, whilst his spade hung wrapped around his neck like a paperclip.
As he lumbered away, Aries wheezed to a stop at the other end of the pipe, and gingerly poked his head inside.
“Oh, no!” squeaked an unfamiliar voice.
Startled, Aries peered deeper into the gloom. “Is somebody in there?”
“No!” snipped the voice. “And I don’t intend to be, either. You surely can’t be thinking of carrying
me
, the All-Knowing Scroll of Attica, down that grubby thing?”
Aries pulled out his head, crossed his eyes and peered down his muzzle at the Scroll.
“Oh, the page-crumpling shame of being carried by a piece of livestock!” squeaked the Scroll, glowing white with disgust. “To think I might have been won by Orpheus, musician to the gods, I could have—”
But Aries didn’t have time to listen.
Clamping his mouth on the Scroll, he hunched down, sucked in his belly, flattened his ears and squashed inside. It was dark and smelled of boiled cabbage. Pushing forwards, his flanks dragged painfully against the sides of the pipe and his horns scraped along the metal. Steeling himself, he forced his broad shoulders against the pipe’s cold metal, biting his lip anxiously.
What if it really was this hard on Earth?
How would he cope without Alex?
He swallowed hard. If only Alex were there too, crawling along behind him, giving him advice, pushing when necessary and complaining.
Some hopes.
Feeling his heart clench, he wondered if Alex had stomped back to the zoo in a huff. Aries wouldn’t have blamed him. After all, he sighed, he’d hardly listened to a thing the boy had said.
“Can’t you hurry up?” muttered the Scroll. “This is hardly my cup of ambrosia.”
Aries snorted and might have pointed out that it was hardly his idea of a good time either, thank you very much, before asking whether the Scroll was aware that he was speaking to a ram of legend? However, since talking would have meant even more effort, he kept silent and squirmed resolutely on to emerge from the other end with an embarrassing squelch.
Finally free, Aries stood for a moment in the moonlight. Then, hearing an odd moaning sound coming from the oak tree up ahead, he pricked up his ears and clopped over. Looking up into its canopy he saw Theseus hanging, dazed, looped over a low bough.