Up on Earth, Rose Pottersby-Weir was bored, bored, bored.
Twelve years old with freckles and a mass of tangled red ringlets, she slumped onto a bench in the Parthenon room of the British Museum, listening to her iPod. Hazel Praline, the fourteen-year-old pop sensation, was singing about how nobody understood her. Rose scowled in agreement, although, as she reminded herself, it was way easier being misunderstood when you were a famous Texan star who spent your days jetting around the world sipping fruit coolers rather than being stuck in a mouldering old museum.
Staring dismally at the slabs of cream-coloured marble that hung around the walls, Rose remembered how her mother had told her that each piece of the frieze was part of a long carving showing a procession of men on horses that had once decorated the sides of the Parthenon, Athena’s temple, in Athens. They’d been there for hundreds of years, until a wealthy Victorian called Elgin had arrived and shipped them back to decorate his Scottish estate. Soon after, he’d sold them to the museum, where they’d hung ever since. Back in Greece, Athena’s temple was crumbling, eaten away by car fumes and rain and the endless scuffle of tourists’ feet. Rose sighed. She was pretty sure that Athena wouldn’t have been happy about that. Not that Rose actually believed in any of the Greeks’ made-up gods and goddesses, of course, but she now reflected sourly, if Athena were real, Rose would certainly have something in common with her: neither of them would want to be stuck in a museum.
Rose flicked absently onto the next track, entitled ‘What am I doing here?’ and stretched out her long legs. Her trainers squealed against the polished floor, rupturing the quiet and dismaying an elderly lady in a tweed suit who glanced up from the glass box in which stood a model of how the Parthenon used to look and frowned.
Rose felt like sticking out her tongue.
What did that old bat know about ruined holidays?
About sitting around, day after day after day, feeling as dusty as the relics on display?
It was all very well, thought Rose, having a mother who was an archaeologist, but did she really have to spend every single second of Rose’s summer holiday cataloguing South American archives at the British Museum?
And worse, expecting Rose to help her?
Each day was spent the same way: down in the basement, hunched over velvet-lined trays, scrabbling through bits of pots and plates left behind by some old Amazon tribe. Even now, Rose was supposed to be quickly collecting two cups of tea from the museum café and hurrying back downstairs with them, but she knew her mother wouldn’t notice how long she was gone. Not if there was a three-hundred-year-old shard of pot with a painting of a toucan feather on it to study. Besides, Rose decided, pulling off her special anti-acid, anti-fingerprint, anti-friction and anti-having-any-fun-document-handling white gloves, she needed a break.
Shoving the gloves into her jeans’ pockets, she watched as yet another tour party meandered into the room. Dressed in shorts and T-shirts, carrying the tour company’s green rucksacks, they looked more like a school of terrapins learning to swim. They flapped around the statues until the tour guide, a tanned man with a long grey beard and yellow umbrella, called them over to look at the marble caryatid that had once adorned Athena’s temple.
Caryatid.
Sulkily, Rose pulled her earphones out and reminded herself of her mother’s lesson on the subject. “A caryatid, Rose, is a column carved to look like a woman.” Rose knew so many fancy archaeological words now. Even ‘museum’ had been explained to her: ‘muse’ from the Greek word meaning to think, and ‘um’, Rose added darkly in her mind, as in, “Um, can’t we go somewhere else, Mum?”
Somewhere else, like the premiere of Hazel Praline’s new film, Rodeo Love, at Leicester Square in two days’ time, for instance? Where the star was going to appear and sing a few songs before her new film was shown?
Some hopes.
Thinking back to her mother’s drawn face, how she’d sighed and told Rose that she wished she could afford to buy her a ticket, Rose folded her arms and stuck her tongue out at the caryatid. The statue gazed loftily back from her special stage, still haughty despite her rain-pitted cheeks, her chipped nose and the way the black velvet curtain that hung across the wall behind her made her marble shoulders look grubby and grey. That was the trouble with archaeology, Rose decided, it was just so totally dead and over.
“Are we there yet?” wailed Aries.
Two long days had passed since Aries’ victory on the assault course. Two long days spent scaling the Mountains of Misery and crossing the Desert of Disappointment towards the portal to Earth. Two long days of Alex worrying about how they would find the fleece whilst Aries asked him what was for dinner.
Now, having finally arrived at the Cave of Celestial Gloom, they stood, washed in its dim light, halfway up a bank of shale. Behind them the cold black water of the River Styx roared, echoing in their ears and bouncing around the damp walls of rock14.
“We need to find the Thorn Roses of Oblivion,” said Alex, gingerly edging his way up the slope towards the dark glistening walls of rock. Beneath his feet the shale crunched, rattling down to splash in the water.
Aries shrugged, vaguely remembering the blackened shrubs draped with the precious possessions the dead brought with them from Earth, stuff that Charon, the boatman who ferried the dead across the Styx, insisted they leave behind in order to forget their mortal lives more easily.
Then he sniffed and stared gloomily down at his wet hoof.
Unfortunately the tattered old barque they’d used to cross the river had been cracked and leaky and Aries was now sopping to the knees.
“Who knows what creatures might be swimming in this,” he muttered irritably. “Aquatic ticks of despair, I shouldn’t wonder. Of course, if I had my fleece I’d be waterproof.”
Alex scoured the walls of the cavern. “Would you be moan-proof, too? Besides,” he went on, “if you’d kept your fleece, then we wouldn’t here at the Styx at all, would we?”
“I wish,” groaned Aries, imagining himself golden, beautiful and magnificent strolling around the Underworld.
“But then,” Alex went on, looking at the patches of withered plants around him, “we wouldn’t have met either. You’d have been the magnificent golden ram feted by the gods and I’d have been a lowly zoo hand. You’d never even have spoken to me.”
Aries considered this for a moment. It was an odd and uncomfortable thought and gave him a funny lump in his throat like the time he’d eaten an overlarge stink beetle, and so he stopped thinking it and scrabbled after Alex, up the shale.
“Why don’t we just ask Charon to show us where the portal is?” He looked around the deserted riverbank. “Where is he, anyway?”
“He retired years ago,” replied Alex, “just after the last Greek came down to the Underworld. Give me the Scroll, Aries, I’ll have a look at the map.”
Aries waited for Alex to untie the Scroll from around his neck and delicately unfurl the ancient paper.
“Aries!” Alex’s shout bounced off the rocks as he peered through a hole in the middle of the parchment, a hole the shape of a ram’s mouth.
Aries shrugged. “I was a bit peckish, you know, after all this climbing and—”
“I don’t believe it!” cried Alex. “You’re supposed to be on a heroic quest, Aries! Not an all-you-can-eat picnic! What are we going to do now? You do realise that this was supposed to be our divine help?”
“Didn’t taste very divine to me,” muttered Aries sulkily. “I’ve had better tasting bog daisies.”
“How-wow-wow d-d-dare you!” spluttered the tattered Scroll, crackling like a badly tuned radio.
“Just look what you’ve done!” fumed Alex, looking anxiously at the trembling Scroll. He waited until it stopped gasping and tried to study the map properly. “According to what’s left of this, the Thorn Roses of Oblivion stand in front of the silvered rock.”
“Silvered rock,” muttered Aries, rolling his eyes.
He hadn’t had a decent meal in days and now they were playing Hunt the Tree.
“We have to snap off a branch to open the portal,” said Alex, as Aries wandered off. “Give me a shout the minute you see them.”
Aries stumbled irritably up the slope and glanced around him. Scowling, he took a bite from a clump of black leaves and stared sulkily at the rock face. Clearly the starvation and damp was affecting his eyes too because the patch of rock in front of him seemed to be dancing with frosted sparkles. They twinkled, flittering like fireflies, and Aries wondered whether to call Alex.
Whilst he was wondering, he bit off the rest of the branch. This time, he felt something crunch in his mouth, hard as olive stones, and looking back at the snapped branch he saw a broken necklace dripping pearls onto the ground.
Suddenly a ripple danced across the rock face, the sort of ripple that a raindrop makes in a puddle, except that there were no raindrops and there wasn’t a puddle, only granite rising in a sheer wall. And granite, as we all know, doesn’t ripple. Or yowl, come to that, which it now began to do, a yowl that grew louder and echoed around the cavern in a series of wails. Dimly aware of Alex racing over, Aries spat out his mouthful of pearls and watched a second ripple pass across the rock.
“You’ve found it!” yelled Alex triumphantly.
A dark crack snaked up the wall, splitting the rock face like a lightning bolt as on either side the rock face began to quiver and twitch, jerking apart like stone gates. A sudden gust of wind whipped through the gap, hurling dust, grit and the unexpected smell of wax polish into their faces before dying away in the cavern behind them. The rocks jolted still, revealing a dim archway to Earth.
In the sudden eerie stillness Alex turned to Aries and looked into his eyes.
“Just remember, we mustn’t draw attention to ourselves. Our lives could depend on it, so do exactly as I say. All right?”
Half-kneeling, Alex leaned forwards into the gap and stretched out his hand. His fingers touched something that felt like material, soft and velvety. Disconcerted, he looked back at Aries. “Stone portals should be hard, not soft,” he whispered. He peered into the grey Earthlight. “And where’s the Greek sunshine?”
Aries stuck his nose into the gap to find out for himself. Alex was right. He sniffed at the fabric and took a small nibble, giving it a thorough chew. Finding that it tasted rather good if a little dusty, he tugged a bit harder and dragged another mouthful back through the crevice.
“Aries, no!” hissed Alex and tried to wrestle the cloth from Aries’ mouth.
But it was too late.
It’s funny, thought Rose, the way your eyesight blurs and makes things seem to quiver when you look at them for a long time. She concentrated harder on the curtain hanging behind the caryatid. It definitely seemed to be twitching. She stared harder.
It was moving!
Rippling, it seemed to be disappearing backwards, like water drawn down a plughole. Which was completely ridiculous, she told herself, since there was only a brick wall behind that curtain. But, ridiculous or not, the curtain rings were now flying off and clattering like coins onto the floor around her feet. Squealing, the tour party ran across the room and, stopping mid-sentence, the guide looked back just as the curtain was yanked completely off its pole. It thumped down onto the caryatid, covering her for a brief moment before flicking out like a matador’s cape and sliding backwards, snagging around her base.
“Someone!” he shouted, jabbing his umbrella in the air. “Call the guards!”
Suddenly the curtain was wrenched away and the statue started to rock. For a long breathless second everyone froze, held rapt as she tilted forwards, the startled hush broken only by the click-click-click of the statue tipping further and further off its base.
The tour guide jumped out of the way. “We need—”
But his words were lost in a smash of marble as the statue tumbled forwards onto the floor and shattered into several chunks, as priceless pieces of ancient history are prone to do when they crash onto a hard floor.
Rose watched, round-eyed, as the caryatid’s head rumbled across the floor towards her and bumped against her feet. Either side of her astonished tourists shouted, clicked cameras and squawked into mobiles as beyond the room an alarm bell began clanging. Covering her ears, Rose looked back up at the stand.
Filling the space where the caryatid had stood was a sheep – the biggest, baldest sheep she’d ever seen – and a dazed-looking boy of about her own age. Rose could hardly believe her eyes and couldn’t imagine how they’d managed to clamber up there.
Kicking up its back hooves, the sheep freed itself of the curtain whilst the boy stood absolutely still, pink-faced with horror, staring at the shattered statue on the floor. Hardly surprising, thought Rose, not only had he helped demolish a precious artefact, but he also appeared to be dressed in what looked like a pillowcase, drawn in round the middle by a wide leather belt.
Just then a guard in a grey shirt and trousers raced into the room, shouting at the tourists. Tall and thin with a fierce black moustache and hair that stuck out beneath his cap like a scrubbing brush, Rose recognised Eric, because, as she would have pointed out, you didn’t spend your entire life in a museum without getting to know everyone who worked there. He sprinted across the floor, scrabbled up onto the empty stand and threw his arms around the boy’s chest.
“Gotcha!” he shouted, pinning the struggling boy to the spot. “Damaging the property of this ’ere museum is a chargeable offence!”
The boy twisted and squirmed, his bare feet slipping over the smooth plinth as Eric pulled him onto the floor. Bleating wildly, the sheep leaped down, just as Ron, a second guard, chubby and breathless, lumbered into the room and rolled back his shirtsleeves. Fingers twitching, he pursued the sheep through a party of Japanese schoolgirls before chasing it into a cluster of old ladies. There was a whumping sound as copious handbags thumped the sheep, before it reappeared wearing a straw hat, trimmed with yellow roses, over its horns. Now blinded by the hat, it skidded into a pushchair, sending a teddy bear into the air. Two tiny pink fists waved furiously from under the canopy.
Looking desperate, the sheep tossed the hat away and galloped past Rose. For a second she caught the look in its eyes: wild, angry… and something else.
Intelligent?
Rose blinked the weird thought away. And yet, she felt certain there was something different about the animal, quite apart from its size and baldness and that sparkle of gold across its brow.
Finally, the sheep gasped to a standstill and Ron, sensing his chance, seized a wooden chair that stood against the wall and walked towards it, brandishing the chair in front of him like a lion tamer. In response, the ram lifted its shoulders and lowered its head, snorting through flapping black nostrils.
“Aries! No!” The tourists’ heads swung round like spectators at a tennis match as the boy shouted, straining against Eric’s hold. “Don’t do it!”
Rose stared at the boy and then at the sheep.
Aries?
To her amazement, the sheep relaxed, lowered its shoulders and looked towards the boy.
It’s behaving more like a dog than a sheep, thought Rose. Stranger still, as if it understands what the boy says. And that, she reminded herself, was completely crazy.
Ron set down the chair. “That’s better.”
He walked through the sea of startled tourists to the spoilt plinth, unhooked the velvet crowd-rope and fashioned it into a makeshift lead.
“Easy now,” he murmured, walking back towards the sheep with the rope held out boldly in front of him.
Rose blinked, certain that the sheep rolled its eyes at the ceiling as Ron draped the rope around its neck. Holding the lead tight, Ron returned his attention to the boy.
“You one of them protestors?” he barked. “Them that wants the British Museum’s marbles back in Greece again?”
The boy looked confused.
“Protestors?” gasped a nearby American lady and lifted her gigantic sunglasses off her nose for a better look. “I get it! That’s why they’re dressed up in such a kooky way, isn’t it? Like the old Greeks?” She stepped closer and poked the boy’s shoulder. “He’s real convincing, but the sheep’s a bit moth-eaten, ain’t he?”
The sheep flared its nostrils. Quickly the boy stamped his foot and after a quick exchange of looks the sheep slumped back down on its haunches, frowning.
“Guys,” said Rose hesitantly, as Ron tightened his grip on the lead. “Shouldn’t we clear the room?”
Twenty-three pairs of American eyes, five pairs of Japanese eyes, two pairs of guards’ eyes, the sheep’s golden eyes and the boy’s brown ones all turned to stare at Rose. She felt her cheeks warm with embarrassment and, if you’d asked her later why she chose to speak up at that particular moment, she couldn’t have told you. Perhaps it was because a boy and a sheep turning up to demolish relics in the British Museum was the single most awesome thing that had ever happened to her. After all, not even Hazel Praline had her glamorous days interrupted by livestock. Or perhaps it was just because they really looked like they needed some help.
“I mean,” she went on, “it’d be safer, wouldn’t it?”
Eric took one hand from the boy and mopped his brow with a handkerchief.
“She’s right, Ron!” He cleared his throat and turned to the crowd. “Ladies and gentlemen, if we might ’ave your cooperation, please?”
A moment later, Rose stood holding the sheep’s rope as Ron and Eric ushered the tourists out through the double doors. Aware that the sheep was staring at her and tilting his muzzle from side to side to get a proper look, she turned to face him whereupon he slapped his lips together and concentrated on the ceiling instead.
A couple of minutes later the guards had bolted the doors and walked back across the empty hall.
“Forty years,” muttered Eric. “Forty years I’ve looked after that statue lady. Never allowed so much as a lollipop to touch her and now look!”
“It’s not that bad,” said the boy. “After all, she’d already lost both her arms.”
Eric and Ron stared open-mouthed.
“And,” the boy continued, “her stone’s grey. She used to be pure white.”
“Comedian as well as vandal, are we?” said Ron, his face darkening to a shade of plum. “We’ll see how funny you find it when the police arrive.”
“Police?” said Rose.
“Of course,” said Ron. “This here is criminal damage.”
Rose thought quickly. “But the police won’t arrest a sheep, will they?”
“No,” Ron muttered coldly. “They’ll bring along,” and here he made a cutting gesture across his neck with his finger, “special services.”
Aries, who wasn’t much into sign language at the best of times and particularly those from a modern Englishman, had no trouble deciphering this one. Rose heard a noisy gulp from the other end of the lead.
“That’d be awful!” said Rose.
“Hardly,” said Eric, reaching for his mobile phone and looking around him. “This is what’s awful. One of the museum’s most important finds ruined and me with only three weeks to go till retirement. Where will me invite to the queen’s garden party be now?”
“Hold on,” said Rose. “I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t I have a word with my mum? Really, she’s bound to know someone who could fix the statue.” She looked at the shattered mess on the floor. “You know, someone who’s good with glue.”
The guards looked at her, their interest piqued. Everyone knew how dedicated Rose’s mother was and the hours she spent working on the museum’s artefacts, and slowly their faces brightened. She was as organised as a phone directory. Of course, she’d simply make a list of who to ask and text and phone until everything was perfect again.
“And,” Rose added, “I bet she could fix things before the museum director comes back from holiday at the end of the week.”
Ron’s face began to relax. Rubbing his chin thoughtfully he looked at the broken statue.
“Well, all right,” he said finally. “But what about these two?”
Rose felt the boy’s gaze. “I certainly don’t think we should involve the police,” she said. “The publicity would reflect badly on security.”
“Quite,” said Eric, looking down at his shoes.
“Anyway, Mum could sort them out, too, phone the right people, make sure the insurance was sorted without any fuss.”
“Really quickly,” added Rose. She took a step towards the door marked PRIVATE at the back of the room. “Shall I take them to her now?”
“What do you think, Eric?”
Unsurprisingly Eric didn’t take any persuading. “Get the kettle on!”
A few moments later when the guards had left, locking the doors behind them and pausing to take one last glance through the glass before heading to their staffroom, Rose tightened her grip on the rope and looked at the boy.
“Right!” she said, sounding much braver than she felt. “My name’s Rose. Who on earth are you?”
14. Some of you might be surprised to find the route back to Earth so grim. This was because Hades, king of the Underworld, had always loved a bit of drama. Before he married Persephone, the whole Underworld was filled with shadowy grey light and bare trees that dripped water down the back of people’s necks, but when she arrived, his new queen insisted on a makeover that cheered everything up. Now, only the old pathway, unused for several years, remained the stuff of spook and gloom.