Things weren’t going well, were they?

But then, I suppose two children and a ram were never going to be much of a match for a sneaky, all-powerful sorceress, were they? After all, how many ancient Greek superheroes with farmyard sidekicks have you heard of?

Well, quite.

Ten minutes later Alex was having a lie down. That was the good news. The bad news was that it was because the sorceress had strapped him to a marble plinth, hidden inside a building in her garden that was fashioned to look like a miniature Greek temple. Indeed, from the outside the building’s carved pediments and columns made it appear a charming spot for a summer glass of lemonade. However, such architectural merit was of little comfort to Alex since he:

a. Was imprisoned on the inside, and

b. Couldn’t see anything but coffins.

That’s right.

Coffins.

Dark wood, golden wood, crumbling wood and mouldering wood coffins that lay stacked on the stone shelves rising either side of him like some ghastly filing cabinet of the dead. Unfortunately this was because Alex was now inside Medea’s private crypt. And, although he (luckily) didn’t realise it, each coffin actually held the remains of some curious person or other, some courtier, maid, model or journalist, who’d over the centuries come a tad too close to discovering who Medea really was and precisely what she was doing. Caught snooping, each nosy parker had consequently been strapped to the very same plinth as Alex and forgotten about. Whenever this happened one of Medea’s servants had been dispatched months later to ‘tidy up’, sweeping the scatter of bones into a fresh coffin and stacking it on a shelf.

Straining against the leather straps that bound his chest, arms and legs, Alex’s mind returned to the sheep in the cellar. He knew it wasn’t logical for a sorceress, and a glamorous one at that, to keep such animals.

Cheetahs or leopards?

Yes, maybe.

Even a hulking vulture with a razor-sharp beak.

But never sheep.

Suddenly an icy feeling seeped into his stomach and turned his insides to frozen slush. But, much as we need one of those candles-lighting-in-the-lantern moments, where Alex would realise what Medea was up to, I’m sorry, this wasn’t it. No, Alex’s sudden dread was because the crypt door had groaned open and now he was aware that someone else was in the room too, and that their breathing was growing steadily closer…

 

Meanwhile at that precise moment, the only breathing Aries could hear was his own.

Slumped on the floor, he gulped and wheezed, sucking in great mouthfuls of air and gusting them out again, utterly exhausted. This was because he’d spent the last twenty minutes hurling his considerable bulk against the gate of his stall in a frenzied attempt to escape. But unfortunately, not only was he just as trapped as he’d been when he started, but his ears were now ringing painfully from the jangle of his horns against metal (which in case you’re wondering is a sound much like that produced by a troop of monkeys armed with wooden spoons let loose in a saucepan factory) and his head throbbed violently.

But still, he absolutely couldn’t give up.

Not when he was sure that the fleece was here with Medea. Not when being stuck down here was the closest he’d been to his magnificent coat for over three thousand years. And not when every time he closed his eyes, he saw the terrified look on Alex’s face as they’d dragged him out of the cellar.

He had to get out.

Hauling himself to his hooves, he lowered his head and fixed his stare on the gate again. And jumped when a small voice piped up from the gloom. “That metal’s magic!”

Aries swung his head round and stared in astonishment at a lamb with a face as bumpy as a potato grinning at him from beneath a helmet tangled with red and blue wires that spiralled in all directions.

Aries blinked. “You can talk?”

The lamb nodded.

“We all can,” said an ewe, stepping out from the woolly wall of sheep behind the youngster. Sturdy, with the same tightly coiled wool as the lamb and honey-gold horns that curled back over her head, she looked sadly at Aries. “Medea likes to hear how frightened we are, so she bewitched us into talking.”

Aries looked from the ewe to her lamb and back again. “How long have you been down here?”

“Nearly a year,” answered the ewe. “I’m Martha. I was captured from Somerset. But my little Toby was born here. He’s never seen anything but this disgusting place.”

Aries couldn’t help but remember his own lambhood, spent leaping around the sun-drenched hills of old Greece, glittering like a starburst, the scent of jacaranda in the air. And despite his urgent desire to find the fleece, his gnawing worry about Alex, not to mention his throbbing headache, Aries felt an overwhelming surge of pity course through him from hooves to muzzle as he pictured Toby, growing up in this mouldering candlelit prison full of machinery.

More furious than ever, he thumped the bars again with his horns, sending a resounding clang bouncing around the walls.

“Give up,” said a deep voice with a lilting sing-song accent.

Aries looked through the clustered sheep to see the shaggy-coated ram that Medea had drenched half an hour ago step away from the others. Slender, with bright, questioning eyes, the ram tilted its head, regarding him haughtily down a long creamy muzzle, still glittering with water. “No matter how hard you try, da metal of your pen never buckle will. It’s enchanted to be super-strong.”

“But you don’t understand!” Aries shook his head impatiently. “I have to get out of here! I am Aries Khrysamallos!”

“Já, já, já,” muttered the ram. “And I am Olaf.”

“Mr Olaf,” said Aries coolly, “you do realise that I am the ram of the Golden Fleece?”

“Golden golden blah blah blah,” murmured Olaf. “Yes, we know all about you, ram. Medea and da serpent talk of you much.”

“They do?” said Aries, for a moment forgetting his annoyance with the sullen ram. He stuck up his ears, expectantly. “And what do they say?”

At which Olaf turned away and started to polish his horn against the bar of his pen.

“Well, come on!” prompted Aries. “This is important.”

“Dey talk of using da fleece,” said Olaf. “Dat’s all.”

“Using it?” said Aries, frowning. “How?”

Olaf shrugged. “For her magic, I suppose.”

“What magic?”

Olaf looked up at him and sniggered. “You think sorceresses confide in dere livestock, já?”

“No, of course not!” snapped Aries. “But one of you might have overheard something helpful. About where they keep it?” He looked quickly up and down the long rows of sheep faces in case anyone had. But no one spoke. Instead, they continued chewing and staring dismally into the gloom.

“Anyway,” smiled Aries, “the wonderful thing is that it’s still here!” A tingle of excitement shot down his legs at speaking the words out loud. “I just have to get it!”

At which Olaf, looking rather bored, stretched out his front leg and examined his hoof.

“Mr Olaf!” Aries felt his anger rising again. “I would appreciate your help! Must I remind you, I am a ram of legend? I’ve never been held in a stall in my life.”

Now Olaf turned to Aries, pulling his head up against the rattle of chain, a glint of rage in his caramel eyes. “Is dat so, famous ram? Well, neither had I!” He stood tall and proud. “I am from north of Iceland where snowy skies match my wool.” He tossed his head to the left. “Here are bighorn sheep from Rocky Mountains, dere are Booroolas from Australian ranch.” He jabbed his horns in the direction of the pens lining the shadowy wall at the back of the cellar. “Over dere are Dorsets, Cotswolds and Wensleydales from English meadows. You think we belong in stalls?”

“Well, no,” said Aries, uncomfortably aware that the other sheep were now staring at him. He glanced at their faces, long or round, white or blotched with black, framed with ringlets, fuzz or tight curls, beginning to wonder why there were quite so many breeds of sheep down here. “But I can assure you that if I had not been robbed of my fleece, I certainly would not be down here.”

“Had you not been robbed,” replied Olaf hotly, meeting Aries’ gaze, “neither would we.”

Aries paused, searching the Icelandic’s disgruntled face, wondering what he meant.

“What are you talking about?” he said. “It’s Medea’s fault you’re here, not mine. But if you’d be so kind as to help me get out of here so that I might find my fleece, then I’ll leave you all in peace.”

“In peace?” scoffed Olaf, casting a glance at the grinding machinery overhead. “Certainly, let’s all help da poor golden ram!”

Aries snorted. “Mr Olaf, I don’t like your tone!”

“Oh really?” said Olaf, bristling. “Maybe dere are other things here you will not like, also!”

Aries felt his anger cool into confusion. “Like what?”

For a moment the Icelandic looked away.

“Olaf?” persisted Aries.

“Like da fact your fleece you never will find!”

Aries shook his head. “Don’t be so absurd! Obviously, I’ll need to be careful and I suppose it might take a few hours to search the house, but—”

“It’s gone, ram!” Olaf’s face grew pink with impatience. “All gone!”

“Gone?” Aries snorted, incredulous. “What are you talking about?”

“Da sorceress has used it all up! I hear her say last week to snake, ‘Only one ringlet left. Den nothing!’”

Aries felt the air gush from his lungs. “Don’t be so ridiculous!”

“Ridiculous, is that? You don’t think sorceress with cellar full of sheep is ridiculous?” Olaf took a step forwards. “You don’t wonder why we all here?”

Aries took a step back, his mind whirling, his head suddenly pounding with the slap of paddles and groan of turning wheels.

“I don’t know,” he said finally, aware of a very bad feeling in the pit of his stomach, a feeling that was getting stronger.

“Golden ram, she is trying to make new fleece!”

Aries lurched backwards on wobbling legs and crashed into the back of the pen.

“Look round you! She try everything,” said Olaf. “Every breed! Slapping, drenching, combing with magical wood! She inject us, bathe us, shock us with sparks.”

Aries slid down, floored by the horror of what he was hearing. That the fleece was gone! That Medea could be so cruel! He scrunched his eyes tight shut and wished he could shut his ears too as Olaf went on. “She feed three sheep with mixture of gold and magical roots. Now all die. None of her plans work! But now see! Finally, she has herself da highly very important ram of da Golden Fleece! Perhaps now her scheme work and she leave rest of us alone?”

And so saying he bustled round and pointed his bottom towards Aries. At which, the other sheep, being sheep, copied him immediately, so that just a few seconds later, every sheep in the cellar had turned their bottom towards Aries in a great big woolly wall.

And I’m sorry.

This whole episode has just been far too ghastly for me to talk about any more. If I had a woolly bottom I’d probably join in with the others, because words fail me. But I don’t, so I’m off.

 

Unlike Alex and Aries, Rose wasn’t having an unpleasant time at all. In fact, whilst Alex lay captive in the crypt and Aries endured his most terrible night since his fleece had been stolen in the first place, Rose was standing on the ornate balcony of a bedroom in Medea’s villa sipping a cool blackcurrant cocktail. She’d found it waiting for her, fizzing in a crystal glass on the ledge and now, as it popped and bubbled on her tongue she gazed down at the swimming pool and the candles encircling it, splashing spangles of light in the water.

Perhaps you think that drinking something made by a sorceress is a bad idea? Well, of course it is. But before you lose heart with Rose for being silly, just remember the sort of day she’d had. Frankly, it had left her horribly frightened and anxious, not to mention thirsty, and seeing that dark, sparkling drink had simply been too tempting. Now, as she let its blackberry bubbles burst on her tongue, she began to feel deeply relaxed.

However, as you’ve probably guessed, blackberries weren’t the only ingredients in Rose’s drink.

There were also:

Making the mixture a potent cocktail of carefree optimism, mixed in with a measure of dreamy gullibility, all topped off with a double dollop of wishful thinking.

Of course, there was another ingredient that Medea intended to add to Rose’s evening. More bewitching than her herbal mix, more ancient and powerful, too, this one isn’t found in any flowerbed, but since she intended to serve it later, that’s when I’ll tell you about it otherwise you’ll only forget and we’ll have to go through it all again.

Rose stepped back in from the balcony into her room and gazed at the gorgeous four-poster bed that stood at the far end, made up with cream sheets and an embroidered emerald silk cover. It was a world apart from her faded duvet cover at home. Whilst her bedroom at home was carpeted in one of her mother’s bargain buys, now stained and patchy with wear, the polished wooden floor here was scattered with sumptuous rugs. An ornately carved chair stood plumped with velvet cushions in front of a huge dressing table spread with jewel-coloured bowls of powder puffs, lipsticks and pots of glittering eye shadows, and a basket brimming with bottles of nail varnishes in golds and pinks and reds. Rose had never seen such beautiful things and she longed to try them.

She walked over and sat on the dressing table’s stool and gazed at her reflection in the mirror. She smiled as the mixture of poppies and moonwort washed away her worries, and, unclipping her hair, shook it free. She imagined Alex and Aries in equally exquisite rooms. Perhaps, right now, Alex was relaxing in a room full of ancient Greek boy stuff, whilst Aries was munching through a tossed salad of olives and nettle.

Giggling, she felt a fuzzy warm glow rise up from her toes, through her legs and body, muffling the tiny squeak from some remote part of her brain that tried to tell her that it wasn’t likely. She glanced into her bag, noticing that the Scroll had now folded itself tightly into what appeared to be a half-hearted origami elephant.

“Everything’s all right,” she soothed, stroking its paper edges. “You don’t need to worry.”

At which the Scroll shrank into itself even more tightly.

Rose frowned, wondering fleetingly why the Scroll was behaving so oddly but the thought was instantly snuffed out like a bonfire smut in rain as she felt her legs growing heavier and her whole body filling with a warm sleepiness, like being snuggled under a duvet on a winter night.

Behind her, the wardrobe was reflected in the dressing table mirror, its doors open to reveal an interior crammed with clothes and boots and shoes. She turned and walked across the room to take a closer look. Reaching into the wardrobe, she clicked the hangers over the rail one by one to reveal glitzy silver tops, cashmere sweaters in sapphire and ruby-red, short skirts and long skirts and four pairs of jeans, some ripped denim and others sparkly with glitter swirls, and all in her size. Spotting a flash of candy-pink, Rose pulled out a pair of jeans and caught her breath, recognising them as the same design that Hazel Praline had worn for her last music video.

Rose glanced down at her old sun dress. Two minutes later she had changed into the pink jeans, teamed with a pair of over-the-knee grey suede boots and a grey T-shirt splashed with pink glitter. Smiling, she twirled a full circle before reaching for a pot of pink nail varnish and, pulling out the brush and breathing in the heady scent from the bottle, she began to paint her nails.

 

What’s that?

You want to know about Alex, pinned to the plinth in a tomb room filled with breathing? Well, all right, but I’m not staying down there long.

Unfortunately, the breathing outside the crypt had now become the breathing inside the crypt. It had grown louder, closer and – worse – much shallower. Worse, that is, because Alex now recognised it as the sniffling snorts a snake makes when it’s about to attack, and straining against the straps, he twisted his head to see Hex slithering towards him, the snake’s tail whipping furiously over the dusty floor. Seconds later Hex sprang up beside him, the top third of his body as stiff as a broomstick, his tongue frantically quivering in the air.

“What’re you doing?” spluttered Alex, feeling a sudden panic punch behind his ribcage.

Hex’s eyes glittered like emeralds. “I’ve decided to kill you,” he hissed, flinging open his jaws to display two enormous fangs hanging like glittering stalactites a centimetre from Alex’s nose. Staring into the inky black coffin-shaped void of the snake’s maw, he imagined the even darker void that Hex could send him to with a single bite.

“Why?” gasped Alex, trying hopelessly to shrink back further against the plinth as the snake puffed out his neck-flap to make himself even more menacing. His mind scrambled back to what had happened in the cellar, desperate to discover what had made the snake suddenly so truly ferocious. And realised.

Alex snatched a breath, hoping it wouldn’t be his last. “This is about London Zoo, isn’t it?” he said. “You want to prove yourself to Medea!”

The snake jerked to a standstill and blinked. “Yesss,” he said, his eyes glittering with surprise. “The mistressss always loves an agonisssing death.”

Alex shook his head. “You poor thing,” he said, trying to keep the tremor out of his voice.

Hex snapped his mouth shut. Throughout his life he’d been called many things: Silver Bringer of Death, Murder-Fangs, He Kills in Screams, Middasypoo-poos (although that was his mother and he didn’t make it public) but not once had anyone called him a poor thing.

Or ever felt the teensiest bit sorry for him.

Until now.

“Medea doesn’t treat you very well, does she?” said Alex, sensing the snake’s breathing start to slow. “I expect she’s always been short-tempered and unduly disappointed at the things you do, hasn’t she?”

Slowly, the snake nodded and opened its mouth.

“Then why don’t you tell me all about it,” soothed Alex, trying not to notice the venom dripping from Hex’s fangs. “I’m sure it’d make you feel better to get it off your chest. And you can always kill me afterwards.”

Hex considered this for a few seconds before slithering up onto the plinth and lacing himself over the boy’s body like icing on a doughnut.

“You wouldn’t believe what ssshe did to me with a bucket of frozen sssquid,” he began softly, his face a few centimetres above Alex’s neck. “It wasss ten yearsss ago now, but I can ssstill remember the headache. And asss for the black ssstains on my ssstomach ssscales…”

“That’s dreadful,” said Alex.

“But that wasss only the ssstart,” Hex sighed. “Ssshe sssaid ssshe couldn’t be ssseen with sssuch a sssplotchy familiar and decided to get the ssstains out in the fassst cycle of the wassshing machine. I wasss burping bubblesss for weeksss.”

For the next ten minutes Alex listened as Hex rasped about his miserable life with Medea. Glad to have stalled the snake’s attack, the boy’s mind fizzed, desperate to think of something to steer Hex from his murderous plan. Yet, despite facing near-certain death at the fangs of the world’s most venomous snake whilst being trapped in a sorceress’s crypt full of coffins, Alex couldn’t help feeling both angry and sad on Hex’s behalf. Like the monsters in the Underworld Zoo, like the sheep in Medea’s cellar, Hex had been cruelly mistreated. But as Alex consoled the serpent, he slowly became aware of something slightly more useful to him than sympathy: the unmistakable tingle of an idea forming in his mind.

“Ssso you sssee,” concluded Hex, pausing to utter a long hissing whoosh of dismay, “I can’t bear the thought of a one-way trip in a sssewing basssket to ssshare sssome glassss box with a podgy boa conssstrictor,” he said. He rose up and regarded the boy with wide gentle eyes. “Thanksss for lissstening. If you try and relax, I’ll make thisss asss painlessss asss possible.”

“Hold on!” said Alex, as Hex loomed above him. “You’re a clever reptile. What you do think killing me will really do?”

“Endear me to Medea, of courssse,” said Hex.

“Today, perhaps,” said Alex thoughtfully. “But what about tomorrow? Or next week? How about the next time you annoy Medea? You know she’ll go back to her old ways again. So, you’d be no better off.”

“No better off,” muttered Hex, his tongue drooping like a bootlace between his lips.

“Unless…” said Alex.

“Unlessss what?”

“Come closer,” said Alex, trying not to imagine just how big those fangs would look close up. “I’ve got an idea.”

Seconds later, excited hisses punctuated by the slap of snake tail against coffin sides echoed around the ancient stillness of the crypt, as Alex told Hex his, quite frankly, brilliant idea.

And no doubt you want to know what Alex was saying, too. Well, I’m sorry. I said I’d tell you whom the breathing belonged to and to be honest I’ve hung around in this grubby crypt far longer than I intended. I’m going back to Rose.

So there.