“I can still smell it,” said Aries, pushing his nose against Alex’s sandals. “Are you sure it’s not you?”
Alex pushed a rhododendron out of his face, searching the crowd, willing Rose to appear from the thronging street.
“Three hundred and eleven,” he muttered, “and it’s definitely not me.”
“Hmm.” Aries snuffled at Alex’s jeans. “You’re right.”
In fact, thought Aries, flaring his nostrils in the breeze, this new smell was quite different from what you’d expect a zookeeper who’d not had a bath since he’d left the Underworld to smell like. It was, he decided, much hairier. What makes a smell hairy is indeed a good question. Maybe it was rank like an out-of-sorts hamster or musty like a yak in a rainstorm. I don’t really know, but I do know that sheep have an awfully good sense of smell, and if Aries thought it was hairy then it was hairy. And, what’s more, he didn’t like it.
“It smells grubby,” sniffed Aries, “with overtones of goat.” He nudged Alex with his horn. “I want to go!”
“Use the – three hundred and thirteen – bushes,” hissed Alex.
“Not like that!” said Aries. “I mean go go. As in go away!”
He stomped backwards out of the bushes, the boards at his sides and his copious rear pushing the branches sideways, so that when he stepped clear they all sprang back and slapped Alex’s legs.
“Ouch!” yelped Alex. “That hurt. Aries, I’ve told you before to be more careful. You always…”
But as usual, whenever Alex was getting grumpy, Aries wasn’t listening. Now he shrugged off the advertising boards and sniffed the air. There was a second, zestier smell, more like freshly sliced lemons. It was, he decided, as though something goaty had tried to hide its mangy smell under something fruity.
And failed.
Aries trotted back and tugged on Alex’s jumper.
“Get off!” said Alex, still rubbing his stung legs. “Three hundred and forty-two. You know a smell can’t hurt you.”
Aries sighed and slumped onto the grass. For a moment he considered sulking properly. After all, he had had the most dreadful morning, what with giant birds, ridiculous outfits and now, being stuck like a garden ornament in the middle of a frog-heavy park. However, at that moment, something somewhere started chugging nearby. Pricking up his ears, Aries turned his head and was surprised to see what appeared to be a funny-looking metal chariot, painted pink and green and blue, splutter to a halt on the path. A trumpet-shaped horn on its roof crackled into life, filling the air with a tinkle of music-box notes.
“Ice creams! Delicious ice creams!” said a voice. “Come and get yours now! Double helpings! Super creamy! Best in London!”
Aries peered harder at the vehicle, wondering if these ice creams were like the ones they used to sell in Athens: clay cones stuffed with crunched ice and sultanas. The painted ones on the chariot’s sides looked a lot tastier and he was sure they’d make him feel better.
“Mouth-watering flavours!” continued the voice. “Rum and Grazing!”
“Grass-berry Ripple,” the voice went on. “With silage sprinkles. Mint Dock Dip and Meadowslippi Mud Pie!”
Aries rose to his hooves and shuffled onto the path, drooling.
“What are we waiting for?” he muttered to Alex.
“Hang on,” Alex called, stepping out from the bushes.
But it was too late and Alex could only watch as Aries clopped towards the van, licking his black lips, unable to resist flavours that sounded so delicious and unusual. Just like the ice-cream seller, as he was about to discover. Well, apart from the delicious bit.
Rose stepped into Seamed Desires feeling an odd mixture of fear and relief. Fear because she’d half-expected harpies to be perched on the glittering chandeliers that hung from the ceiling and relief because they weren’t.
Taking off her sunglasses she looked around her. Despite the creepy trio in the window, the shop appeared perfectly Bond Street normal: oceans of golden carpet, chaises covered in ruby-coloured silk and the sort of marble counter you find in foyers of grand hotels. In fact, the only strange thing was the rather odd smell. Musty and stale, for some reason it reminded her of animal stalls. She walked across the room looking around her. Ballgowns glowed like blossom over the walls and hung in rainbow drifts behind carved alcoves; summer dresses were draped over the branches of stands carved to look like golden trees; all around the walls, shelves sparkled with gold and silver spiky-heeled shoes.
“Deception.” Alex’s voice floated back into her memory. “It’s what she’s best at.”
There was a chinking sound and Rose turned to see a slender woman, wearing the same black dress as the mannequins in the window, with a blue belt, walk through a glass-beaded curtain. She had a heart-shaped face and shiny green eyes tilted like a cat’s. Blinking, she smoothed her blonde hair, which was pinned up elegantly above her long neck.
“Good afternoon,” she said softly. “Are you looking for something in particular?”
Rose looked round awkwardly. “An outfit,” she said finally, turning to face the assistant’s fixed smile.
The woman was stunning, Rose decided, feeling a strange chill, not just sophisticated or well-groomed, but actually flawless. Weirder still, her skin was so taut that it didn’t even wrinkle as she smiled.
Rose’s skin prickled. She looked at the woman’s wide brow, her long nose, those sooty eyelashes.
“Occasion?” repeated Rose.
The woman tilted her head prettily. “For your Seamed Desires creation, of course.”
Rose bit her lip. “A, um, birthday party.”
“How lovely,” the woman replied. “I think we may have the very thing for you in our Junior Diva collection.”
Stalking on impossibly high heels she moved to a rail of dresses the colours of tropical fishes and slid each hanger along, glancing at each one in turn before sliding the next into its place. Rose followed her across the room, glancing at the gold-legged tables set around the room. The nearest was piled high with copies of Vogue magazine, with Medea’s picture on the top. Rose stared into the photograph’s grey eyes. Despite the warmth of Medea’s skin, they remained steely and cold.
“Is Medea here today?” asked Rose with a casualness she certainly didn’t feel.
“Not today,” replied the assistant. She smiled at Rose, the light bouncing off her sharp cheekbones like sunshine on a glacier.
Rose tried to calm her nerves. Just because she was standing in a sorceress’s shop, she reminded herself, was no reason to start imagining ridiculous things, hearing giggles and feeling scared of an assistant. Although, if you’d asked me, I’d have said it was an excellent reason. Furthermore, I’d already be sitting on the next bus rumbling away down the street.
“Medea’s busy adding the finishing touches to Ms Praline’s dress for the premiere tomorrow night,” the assistant continued.
“Hazel Praline?” said Rose, for a moment forgetting her nervousness.
“Oh, yes,” the woman nodded brightly. She pointed to a framed photograph hanging nearby. “Ms Praline is one of Medea’s special clients.”
Rose stared round-eyed at the picture: Hazel Praline, the Hazel Praline, beamed back. Giggling, her hands hidden in her curtain of long blonde hair, she looked out at the camera whilst Medea knelt at her feet, her face obscured by folds of the dress’s skirt, the layers of taffeta so sugary pink and gauzy that it looked as though it had been spun from a giant’s candyfloss machine.
The sudden clang of hanger against rail snapped her out of her reverie.
“How about this?” said the assistant, holding up a trouser suit.
And even though Rose was hardly in the mood to comment on fashion, she felt her jaw drop. The suit was beautiful. Cut from sapphire-blue cloth, its fabric fell like waves, rippling into wide-legged trousers, whilst its jacket was long and loose, edged with silver piping and fastened by silvery-pink buttons shaped like seashells.
“It’s gorgeous,” said Rose truthfully.
“Perhaps Miss would care to try it on?” The assistant pointed to the glass-beaded doorway leading to the back of the shop.
Sensing her chance to explore, Rose nodded.
“I knew you would,” smiled the assistant and led Rose through the beaded-curtain into a long corridor, spotlit on either side like a catwalk. Curtains to changing rooms lined one side of the corridor, whilst the other was a blank wall, hung with framed fashion awards. A door marked ‘STAFF ONLY’ stood at the far end.
The assistant smiled quickly, hung up the trouser suit and snapped the curtain closed behind her. Rose waited, staring back at her anxious reflection, until the woman’s footsteps faded away.
Then she stepped out again and hurried towards the door at the end of the corridor.
Alex had lost count.
If he had still been counting he’d have been up to eight hundred and seventeen.
Except he wasn’t.
Because he was now lying on the floor of the ice-cream van, trying to stop sliding into Aries’ bottom as the van sped out onto the street. It’s never great being kidnapped, but being kidnapped with a rolling ram is something else again.
“You and your ice creams!” muttered Alex as the van veered left, sending Aries steamrollering on top of him.
“Don’t go blaming me,” gasped Aries, paddling his legs in the air. “You always worry too much. How was I supposed to know that this time you’d be right? I was just a bit peckish.”
The van shuddered beneath them and Aries rolled the other way, crashing into a crate of cones that that showered down on him.
“My head hurts,” he muttered, taking a nibble from a nearby cone. “Thanks for asking. And I can still hear that terrible noise.”
Now I expect you’re probably wondering how Alex and Aries ended up in such a mess?
Well, when Alex caught up with Aries and asked the ice-cream seller for a Walnut and Horsefly Whip on his behalf he discovered three things:
1. That the ice-cream seller’s hands were hairy enough to belong to a Cyclops;
2. And that the smell reminded him of a Cyclops, too;
3. Because – yes – he was indeed a Cyclops. A fact that Alex could easily confirm when the aforesaid hairy hands dragged him in through the ice-cream van’s window and brought him up to its solitary eye for a better look before pinning his arms behind him.
However, it was only as he was struggling against Fred’s crablike grip that he heard a tooth-achingly-awful warble of pipes and realised that the Cyclops was not alone. As the shrill squeal reverberated around him, he was horrified to see Aries freeze rigid and topple over sideways to land with a soft thump on the grass. Panpipes, you see, immobilise sheep by turning them into sheepy statues with just a few terrible toots, making the animals so much easier to handle.
Alex squirmed, trying to free himself from the Cyclops, but such creatures are like walking padlocks and Alex had been snapped firmly around the arms. Resistance was hopeless and all he could do was watch from the ice-cream van as a faun – beautifully dressed, but a faun nevertheless – leaped out from behind a nearby clump of bushes.
“Good afternoon,” he said and bowed to Aries, lifting his hat to reveal two small horns. “I am Pandemic. How do you do?”
Of course Aries couldn’t reply. All he could do was lie there with his legs stuck out rigidly like an oversized ram-shaped piano stool.
With a malicious smile, Pandemic seized one of Aries’ horns and dragged him over the grass and, still playing a tune that would curdle milk, jammed him into the van on top of Alex.
Which is where they were now.
No Walnut and Horsefly Whip.
No flake.