Our story begins in the Greek Underworld.
And yes, I do know Greek Underworld sounds a bit like Greek underwear, but let me assure you that our story has nothing to do with pants. In fact, the ghosts who haunt this Underworld don’t even wear pants because pants hadn’t been invented by the time they died. So, please, do stop talking about pants and let me get on.
Now, where was I?
Ah, yes, the Greek Underworld.
It lies many miles beneath our feet and nestles at the centre of the Earth like the stone in a peach. Brimming with sun-dappled waterfalls and forests, it’s home to every potter, poet, thinker, soldier, slave, actor, dog, cat, goat and olive tree who ever lived in ancient Greece, including Aries, the ghost ram of the Golden Fleece and the hero of our story.
Now a ram, for those non-shepherds amongst you, is a male sheep and a fleece is his coat. Usually a fleece is made of wool, snagged with twigs and leaves and is quite often dribbly with dung. But not this one. The Golden Fleece, as its name suggests, was made of pure glittering gold, dazzling to look at and absolutely priceless.
On the afternoon our story begins, Aries was hiding in a bank of Underworld laurels that encircled a special building called the Heroes’ Pavilion. Carved from the creamiest marble, it looked like an ancient Greek temple. A row of columns topped by swirls of stone leaves ran all the way around its sides whilst the panels beneath its roof had been carved to show several Greek heroes, their hair and armour picked out in gold and silver paints – which made Aries want to wee on it.
And I know what you’re thinking.
Ghosts aren’t supposed to wee, are they? They’re not supposed to burp or blow their noses either, but let me assure you that the ghosts in the Greek Underworld do, and plenty of other much ruder things besides. And while we’re on the topic – of Underworld ghosts that is, not ruder things – I might as well mention that Aries, like all the Underworld spirits, wasn’t invisible either.
He didn’t shimmer.
He didn’t waver like a heat haze.
He didn’t leave glowing hoof-prints where he’d trotted.
And he most certainly didn’t vanish like fog. In fact, he was just as bulky as the rams you see up here standing in fields on Earth.
Only bigger.
Much bigger.
Wide as an overstuffed armchair, Aries rippled with muscles. Brawn quivered up his legs and thickened his back, tendons stood taut as ships’ cables along his chest and strained around his wide neck. His face was handsome, and some (Aries mostly) said it was noble, lit by treacle-coloured eyes and glittery with gold dust. On either side of his head, gilded horns looped out, like twisty handlebars on a bicycle.
And since by now I’m sure you’re imagining the most awesome and handsome of rams, I ought to mention one other thing.
Quite a big thing, actually.
The ram of the Golden Fleece was bald. That’s right:
BALD
As bald as a grape, as bald as an artificial eye, as bald as an ice cube, as bald as the world’s baldest crab whose shell has been polished to a blinding baldness by the tide. Not one gilded knot, curl, cowlick or twirl remained on his body. Gone were the ringlets that had fronded his brow and the blaze had that dazzled down his neck. Gone was the fiery thatch across his back and the shimmering coils of gold over his shanks because, before he’d been sacrificed to the gods, his fleece had been sheared off first2. And since ghost rams can’t regrow their wool, Aries’ ghost had remained the colour of three-day-old porridge and bulged like a cheap duvet.
Which brings me to why the most famous ram in history was hiding in a bush in the first place. The problem was that, without his magnificent coat, everyone treated him like any other ordinary sheep.
Can you imagine?
The ram of the Golden Fleece reduced to the sort of sheep you might see bouncing about in a field on a wet hillside? The sort of sheep banned from all the important places, like the Heroes’ Pavilion, because he might eat the dahlias or leave warm, smelly ‘presents’ on the lawns? Worse still, the sort of sheep that ancient Greek ghosts loved to chase and pick on because he was bald and funny looking? All of which made Aries furious enough to hide in the laurels every day to wait for the chance to sneak out and wee down the pavilion’s gleaming walls.
Except today he couldn’t.
Today the place was busier than the agora on Buy One Get One Free day. Ghost slaves had been tottering past for most of the afternoon, carrying tables, stools and benches, pots of lilies and jugs slopping with red wine. Serving women in white dresses had picked their way through the honking, flapping swans specially coloured gold and silver for the party to take in platters of pork and beef or bowls dripping with grapes, plums and olives.
Crossing his legs, Aries wondered at the ivory-coloured ribbons and swags of pink roses that had been tied to the pavilion’s columns. Clearly, he realised, something important was happening today.
But what?
As if in answer, two slaves scrambled up onto the tall urns either side of the pavilion door and tied a banner above it, which read:
THE ANNIVERSARY OF JASON AND THE ARGONAUTS! OUR HEROES!
“Jason and the Argonauts?” snorted Aries in disgust. “Heroes?” The words buzzed around his brain like flies around a cowpat in summer.
Jason was an ancient Greek prince and the Argonauts were the men who’d sailed with him on a ship called the Argo many years ago, when they’d all been alive. Together they’d journeyed to the island of Kolkis where Jason had stolen Aries’ Fleece. Yes, stolen it. Snitched, snaffled, swiped it from where it hung high in a treetop in the middle of an enchanted forest, protected by an enormous snake called Drako3.
Luckily for Jason, the king’s daughter, Medea, who was a sorceress, had fallen in love with him and helped him. However, to tell you the truth, she was a rather unpleasant person and I don’t like talking about her unless I really, really have to. So, I won’t. (But, if you really must know what she did, take a look in the back of this book. I wouldn’t.)
Now, glaring at the banner, Aries found his four stomachs knitted with anger as he remembered that terrible night back in the forest at Kolkis. That’s right, remembered, because what the old books of Greek myths never mention – because the old Greek writers, such as Apollonius, preferred to write about glamorous people like Jason and Medea rather than bald rams – was that Aries was there.
Actually there that night.
As a matter of fact, Aries had been there haunting the forest for years before Jason turned up because he’d been unable to leave his beloved fleece behind. Even with only Drako the snake, twenty metres of slither, slime and stinky breath to talk to, he’d been happy, because every so often, Drako would lift the fleece down from the branches, and lay it over Aries’ back. And then, comforted beneath its sparkling weight, Aries felt special again. It didn’t matter that in reality he was hock-deep in the stink-mud of the forest, because in his mind he was the ram of the Golden Fleece again, handsome and majestic, flying (because his coat was not only beautiful but magical too) over the blue Aegean sea. Screwing his eyes tight shut, he’d tilt his shoulders, imagining himself shooting like a golden comet across a cloudless sky, the claps and whoops of the crowds below ringing in his ears.
And then Jason had arrived.
Even now, a lump rose in Aries’ throat as he recalled scrambling to the top of the cliffs around Kolkis Harbour that moonlit night to catch a last glimpse of his fleece, glittering over the prow of the Argo as it sailed towards the horizon. He’d never seen it again. No, because after Jason returned home and married Medea, he’d only gone and lost it. Lost it like an umbrella on a bus. But unlike Jason, the fleece had never turned up in the Underworld, which made Aries’ horns twitch to butt Jason into the lake every time he thought about it.
Which was all the time.
At last the lawns fell quiet. Aries stuck his nose through the leaves and peered round. Only a few dancing women were left, practising steps on the far side of the lawn. This was his chance. Uncrossing his back legs, he shuffled forwards.
Only to be stopped by a familiar and extremely annoying voice.
“Hello, ladies!” it said.
Aries ducked back into the greenery as Jason strutted out along the top of the pavilion steps. Dressed in his best white chiton, his famous leopard-skin draped over his right shoulder, he tossed back his shoulder-length blonde hair and stroked his beard, smiling. A moment later the women raced over the grass to him, and stood around him, their faces upturned, flushed and pink.
Jason nodded towards the banner. “Wonderful, isn’t it?” he said. “All this? Just for me?”
The women giggled prettily and Aries felt his heart clench.
Snatching a mouthful of laurel leaves, he watched a dancer with long black hair threaded with lilies hurry up the steps and link arms with Jason.
“They say you’ve been in secret training,” she cooed, the silver bells on her belt jingling as she led him towards the others.
Training for what? Aries thought sourly. Getting his tunic on the right way round?
“We know you can beat the others!” said a willowy fair-headed woman. She stroked his muscled shoulder. “But we’ll miss you so much when you’re up there!”
Aries’ jaw fell open, the chewed laurel leaves forgotten in his mouth.
Up there?
There was only one place that was up there.
Earth! And no ordinary ghost from the Underworld had ever been allowed to return there. The gods only knew he’d begged King Hades often enough to let him go back, just once to search for his fleece, but no, it was absolutely forbidden by Underworld law.
He stared at the fair-headed woman, willing her to say more, to explain, but instead she began clapping her hands and singing some rubbish about brave heroes on quests, whilst the others joined hands and skipped around Jason.
Questions galloped through his mind: Who was going back to Earth? How would they be chosen? Why did no one ever tell him anything down here? How in the name of Olympus was he going to find out? They were questions, he raged, that clearly wouldn’t be answered by a group of women jingling their bells.
And then the answer struck him.
Like a hail ball from the skies, it was so big and obvious; he wondered why it hadn’t hit him before. Of course there was someone who’d know, he realised, someone who always knew everything, from what the gods were planning to what the pavilion cat had dragged in the night before. Someone who was at this very moment quite alone in the otherwise deserted pavilion.
Ignoring the scratch and jab of the branches, Aries bustled backwards out of the laurels, hunched down, tippy-hoofed to the back of the pavilion and…
Oh dear! Hold on a moment would you… and do try to ignore that splashy noise…
Right, where was I? Oh yes, now that Aries had relieved himself he hurried over to the servants’ door to the pavilion.
He pressed his forehead against the sun-warmed wood and began to push. Of course, a full frontal charge would have been much quicker, but it would also have been much noisier and Aries couldn’t afford to be discovered before he’d had the chance to ask his questions. Taking a deep breath, Aries stuck his hooves into the ground, stiffened his legs and forced his full weight against the door. There was a keening sound followed by a sharp crack and splintering as the wood gave way. Aries nosed the shards out of the way and squeezed quickly through the hole into the pavilion kitchen.
On either side of him wooden tables stretched away, piled high with food and hundreds of goblets that twinkled in the sunlight. A gloomy-looking stuffed peacock, set on a heap of glazed reeds, stared blindly down at him from a shelf as he clattered through into the Grand Hall.
Tall and airy, the hall was dominated by rows of looming white pillars with the statues of each of the fifty Argonauts set between them. Whenever he’d crept in before, he’d blown raspberries at Tiphys, the helmsman of the Argo and the Argonauts’ getaway driver that night, and waggled his bottom at Pollux, supposedly the son of the west wind but who Aries thought was more like an annoying draught under the door. But he didn’t have time today. Instead he clattered quickly down the hall, his hooves squealing against the mosaic floor, and skidded around the corner.
There she was!
The bowsprit from the Argo hung above the door to the Dining Hall, snoozing. A bowsprit, in case you don’t know, is a wooden figurehead that decorates the prow of a ship, and is often carved to look like the head and shoulders of a woman. And, being made of a clump of wood, they don’t usually know that much. However, this bowsprit was different. Hewn from an oak tree that grew in the magical woodland of Dordona, and enchanted by Athena, goddess of wisdom, this bowsprit had answered all the Argonauts’ questions. Wise and thoughtful, she had guided the Argo to Kolkis, with tips such as, “Turn right at the Pole Star,” “Take a left after the Clashing Rocks,” and, “Turn around where possible.”
“Psst!” hissed Aries.
The bowsprit’s eyes flicked open.
“Danger all shipping!” she announced. “Major obstacle in the water!”
“Do you mind?” hissed Aries.
The bowsprit shrugged, her shoulders creaking like old floorboards. Once her cherrywood face had been polished to a toffee-coloured sheen, her lips painted rose red, her eyes inlaid with ebony, but over the years she’d become infested with woodworm. Far from her life of sea adventures she now spent most of her time moaning about where the cleaners stuck their feather dusters.
“What do you want?” she muttered, raising a sea-stained eyebrow.
“I want to know what’s happening tonight,” said Aries breathlessly, putting on his most engaging smile, which, to be honest, was rather frightening4.
The bowsprit regarded him for a moment, blinking her creaking eyelashes. “What’s in it for me?”
“Linseed oil? Pot of beeswax?” said Aries. “It’ll work wonders for your wrinkles.”
“They’re not wrinkles,” snipped the bowsprit. “They’re laughter lines.”
“Really?” Aries frowned. “That must have been some joke!”
The bowsprit stuck her nose in the air.
“I’m sorry,” soothed Aries, quickly realising his mistake. “I really didn’t mean that.”
The bowsprit sniffed.
“However,” said Aries, “I have heard that beeswax made from the hives of Elysium can work wonders even on wood that’s already beautiful.”
“Already beautiful?”
Aries nodded. “Obviously you don’t need it, but if you’re curious I could bring you some. Probably turn you back into a sapling, a mere twig of a girl.”
The bowsprit tilted her head, interested. “And you’ll throw in a muslin duster?”
“Certainly,” said Aries, who’d be quite prepared to throw in his grandmother if it meant getting some answers.
“Done!” The bowsprit licked her splintered lips. “There’s a party tonight.”
“And?” prompted Aries.
“It’s going to be amazing!” the bowsprit continued. “Athena’s celebrating the Argonauts’ anniversary by holding a competition! What’s more, they’ve made me a crown of laurels, just like they put on the statues in the Olympics!”
“What’s it for?” said Aries.
“To accentuate my good looks, of course.”
“No!” Aries shook his head impatiently. “I meant the competition!”
“Oh, that,” the bowsprit smiled coolly. “It’s a special assault course to decide who’ll be allowed back to Earth on a quest.”
Aries stared speechless.
“Oh, I know,” the bowsprit continued, “there’s never been a competition like it before, and it’ll be tough. But Athena wanted something memorable to mark the occasion. Mind you, everyone knows that Jason’ll win. I mean, he’s just totally awesome.”
“Awesome, my hoof!” spluttered Aries. “You were stuck on the boat that night! You didn’t see him in the forest at Kolkis. Shivering like a swamp rat in the shadows whilst a teenage girl did all his dirty work!”
“So you keep saying,” sniffed the bowsprit. “As if Jason would hide when there was a giant snake to fight!” Her face grew soft and dreamy. “Oh, Jason,” she sighed. “Those glorious days we spent at sea together.”
But Aries had heard enough.
Swinging his head round he turned back towards the Great Hall and began clomping out.
“Jason, is it?” he muttered, looking back over his massive shoulders at the bowsprit’s contented face. “Win the quest? And return to Earth where my fleece is still hidden?” He harrumphed loudly. “We’ll see about that!”
2. Not wishing to dwell on such an unpleasant subject, let’s just say
they didn’t want any messy drips spoiling the golden wool.
3. Don’t ask me why locking it up in a vault wouldn’t have been far
more sensible. Ancient Greek kings were clearly barmy.
4. With no top teeth and a bottom row like wonky gravestones, rams look like four-legged granddads when they smile, all gummy.