A couple of hours later Rose finally woke up.
Sunshine streamed through the balcony doors, bathing her room in brightness. Blinking, she sat up in bed and groaned, feeling as though two miniature sumo wrestlers had picked a fight inside her skull and were now taking turns to furiously thump and throw each other to the floor. Since she didn’t understand why her head throbbed so much it’s lucky that I’m here to explain that the numbing effect of the blackcurrant fizz had worn off during the night, and now half of her brain was thinking clearly enough to squeak that she was in danger whilst the other half, enchanted by Medea’s magical hope spell, attacked it.
Medea could not be trusted, the clear-thinking side piped up.
How ridiculous, trumpeted the other side, insisting it was wrong to judge someone before you knew them properly.
Rose must not help Medea today, whispered the clear-thinking side.
Of course she should, boomed the hope-addled side, otherwise how would she ever learn the magic she needed to find her father?
Rose rubbed her forehead and threw back the luxurious bed covers. Gazing around the beautiful room, she noticed a smart black trouser suit and striped red T-shirt hanging on the wardrobe door. An outfit chosen by Medea for her to wear today.
How thoughtful, trilled the hope-bewitched side of her mind.
Don’t wear it! snapped the logical side.
Feeling sick with confusion, Rose stepped out of bed and pulled the picture of her father from the pink jeans she had worn last night. She propped it against the ornate dressing-table mirror and tried to think clearly. Unfortunately, this is largely impossible when a sorceress has branded your mind with molten hope, but she did her best.
Whatever Medea was really like, she tried to reason, surely she couldn’t just let the chance to learn magic, magic that might help her find out where her father was, slip through her fingers?
Of course she could, needled the logical half of her mind. After all, she was talking about a sorceress, wasn’t she? And besides, there was still the Scroll and its last question, wasn’t there?
The Scroll!
Rose threw open her rucksack and thrust her hands inside, reaching down to the bottom of the bag to make sure that the parchment was still safe. Her fingers touched its soft paper and she pulled it out. It lay scrunched up in a tight roll, its ends over like flaps in her palm. And yet, staring at its creamy glow, she felt her heart sink like a rock in a deep lake. Even with her muddied thinking, she knew that the way things were going, they’d have to use its last question to find the fleece.
Now, don’t be mistaken: Rose wanted to find her father more than anything in the world. But whilst Medea had been right in spotting a fledging apprentice and had started, ever so gently, to warp Rose’s mind into believing that learning magic would make her life so much easier, a bright and good part of Rose remained untouched by the sorceress. Like a drop of oil immune to water, Rose’s true nature remained kind, unspoilt and thoroughly loyal to her friends and now, feeling tears of frustration prickling her eyes, she tucked the Scroll safely back in her bag, knowing its last question must belong to Aries.
Even more reason then, the hope-spiked side of her mind piped up, to trust the sorceress. After all, with Medea’s magical teaching, Rose would have a much better chance of finding out what happened to her father herself, wouldn’t she?
Dressing quickly, Rose imagined flying to the Amazon and using magic to find her father. And yet, as she dragged a brush through her tangled hair, she knew that she could only give in to such wonderful daydreams if she was sure that Alex and Aries were safe.
Safe? chirped the enchanted side of her brain. Of course they are safe. What did she think a fabulous sorceress needed from a boy and a ram?
So, where are they? countered the withering voice of Rose’s true mind.
By now thoroughly tired of her fractious brain and knowing there was only one way to find out, Rose hitched her rucksack onto her back. She walked over to the door and placed her ear against the wood to listen. Beyond it, Medea’s house lay silent, still slumbering, and, taking a deep breath, Rose stepped out to investigate.
“Ready so quickly, Miss?” said a polished voice.
Jumping, Rose looked around the door frame to see Medea’s butler standing a metre away, half-bowing, a syrupy smile on his face.
“Madam will be so pleased,” he added with a wide sweep of his arm. “If you would come this way? She asked for me to escort you directly to the car.”
Wondering about his dad, being escorted to a limousine or having the teeniest spark of hope brighten his desolate mood would all have been improvements on Aries’ morning, because at that moment Fred was dragging him by a chain through the criss-cross of corridors that tunnelled beneath the villa. Fred’s meaty arms bulged with the strain as he pulled Aries around yet another corner into a long passageway that ended in a pair of shining metal swing doors marked by skull and crossbones27.
Aries’ hooves shrieked against the stone floor. Twisting and bellowing, he threw his head from side to side, desperately trying to butt Fred with his horns. In his mind he imagined himself breaking free of the Cyclops’s ironlike grasp and galloping down the corridor to smash through every wall of the villa until he found Alex and Rose. He saw himself rescuing the children and carrying them to safety. But unfortunately for Aries, Cyclopes are tough and wily creatures, canny enough to avoid jabbing horns and strong enough to deal with ram rage. Backing through the doors, Fred hauled Aries into a room flooded with light and padlocked the chain to a metal post bolted into the floor.
“Ram, ram!” muttered the Cyclops and poked Aries on the nose for good measure.
Then he lumbered off through another door into what appeared, in the glimpse that Aries caught, to be a storeroom.
Blinking, Aries caught his breath and looked around. Stark white walls rose on every side, enclosing a room with a white tiled floor and lit by star-bright dots in the ceiling, dominated by a rectangular tank. Slightly larger than bath-size, but with higher sides made of metal, it seemed to be filled with something slimy and green. Something that churned and frothed and dribbled over the tank’s rim in thick sprout-coloured fingers of goo that slid down and splattered on the floor before gurgling away through a metal grille. Clusters of greasy bubbles rose on the liquid’s surface, growing under their slick skins, stretching until they popped in loud explosions of green drops.
A big metal hook hung from a rope wound over a pulley fixed in the ceiling. On the other side it ran tautly down to wrap around the spindle of a winch, bolted to the floor. Feeling a cold dread rising up his hooves and legs, Aries looked away at the steel benches that ran around the walls of the room, scattered with chunks of stripy grey and white rock that seemed to twinkle under the lights.
He was just puzzling what a sorceress would want with the strange assortment of things in the room when a wet spume of goo flew up out of the tank and landed near his hooves.
“Good morning!” said a cold, familiar voice.
Startled, Aries swung his head back towards the doors to see Medea walk in, her high-heeled red shoes click-clacking against the tiles. (And, since I’m mentioning the shoes, I might as well add that Medea was looking especially glamorous this morning, in a black trouser suit, red stripy T-shirt and silk scarf, with her hair fixed in a messy bun pinned up with red chopsticks. Not that Aries had any time for fashion right now.)
“Where’s Alex?” snorted Aries.
“Oh, still around,” said Medea, patting her hair. “He’s not going anywhere.”
Aries breathed a sigh of relief. “You haven’t hurt him?”
Medea shook her head. “Not yet. I haven’t had the time.”
She gazed lovingly into the tank and pulled on a dark waterproof coat.
“Penibilium auriculus,” she said, in the tone of voice most people would use to soothe a kitten. “Such a big old scientific name for gold bugs.”
“Gold bugs?” said Aries, feeling a sour dread wash into his stomach.
“A rather gorgeous little bacteria28,” explained Medea. “Not that I fancied myself as much of a scientist before, but it’s amazing what you can turn your hand to when the need arises. Watch this!”
She snatched a rock from the nearest bench and held it up to Aries, rather like a magician showing an empty top hat to the audience before pulling a rabbit from it.
“Gold ore,” she said and tossed it over her shoulder into the tank.
There was a splash, a slurp and a rude gobbling noise followed by a long disgusting belch as something shot straight back out of the mixture and clattered across the floor.
Giggling, Medea picked it up and showed Aries.
He peered down at the dull piece of rock in her hand. “Where’s the gold gone?”
She nodded at the gurgling tank. “It’s still in there, ready for me to collect and use on the sheep.”
Aries blinked, staring at the writhing green mixture. “The bugs suck gold out of rocks?”
“Sweetheart.” Medea pushed her face towards him, a dark gleam in her eyes. “These little darlings will suck the gold out of anything!” She picked up a long wooden paddle that leaned against the wall and began stirring the mixture. “Mining companies have used them for centuries. Think of them as microbes with big teeth, just like piranhas. Not that you’d have heard of those either, I suppose. Well, Aries, piranhas are meat-eating fish.” Her eyes grew dreamy and she rested her face against the handle of the paddle. “They’ll strip a ram down to its bones in about six minutes. These little beauties are much the same.”
Aries gasped, straining backwards against the chain. But before he could speak, the door to the side room crashed open and Fred bustled out carrying a cage. A ram-of-legend-sized cage. And, straining to see over the Cyclops’s wide shoulders, he spotted stirrups, one bolted into each corner of the cage floor. A padded leather halter, like the ones horses wear to pull carts, hung down from its roof.
“No!” Aries jammed his hooves hard against the polished tiles, but it was no good. They slid like skates over a rink. “You’re not going to—”
“Oh, but I am,” said Medea coldly, snapping her fingers. “Finally, I see why my work has been failing. As if ordinary gold could ever be good enough to use on the sheep. Silly me. But the gold from your bloodstream, Aries? The gold of the fabulous ram himself?”
The Cyclops hurried over, unfastened the padlock on Aries’ chain and threw his bulk against the ram’s rump, pushing him, the way a motorist pushes a broken-down car, into the cage. A moment later Fred had forced the ram’s neck into the halter and his hooves into the stirrups and slammed the door shut.
“At last, I’m going to have a new fleece!” said Medea. She stepped towards the cage and peered at Aries through the bars. “Because yours is all gone!” she added spitefully.
Aries glared back. “I know!”
“You do?” Disappointed by his response, Medea pursed her lips like a sulky child. She straightened up. “Those sheep tongues been wagging, have they? Who’d have thought it? Aries Khrysamallos, always too important to speak to the sheep of Greece, chatting away with that motley herd? Don’t tell me that you’ve finally learned some manners?”
“I’ve learned a lot of things lately.”
“Like what?” she sniggered. “Coming all this way to find out that your fleece is no more?” She shrugged. “Well almost. There is one teensy tuft left.”
Between them Fred attached the hook to the top of the cage.
“One tuft left?” said Aries. “Are you saying you pulled my fleece to pieces? Why?”
“To make it easier to sew into my clothes, of course.”
Aries stared at her blankly, bracing himself as the cage lifted off the ground and began to rise jerkily.
The sorceress’s face looked as hard as marble. “Didn’t you ever stop to think of what your fleece did to me?”
Aries, who’d not thought about Medea for a second more than he’d absolutely had to over the years, shook his head.
“My father was so besotted by it he forgot all about me. Left me to play with a giant snake in a forest. I was six years old, Aries!” Medea stalked across the room and sat on a counter, watching as the cage rose. “Then, years of loneliness later, Jason sailed into Kolkis.” Aries saw her cheeks blush pink and heard her voice soften. “I really thought he loved me. I left my home for him, my people, my life as a princess. All for a so-called hero who dumped me for someone else as soon as the fleece made him king of his own island!” Her voice hardened, becoming as cold and brittle as ice. “Your fleece cursed my life, Aries! So I’ve used it get my own back. I’ve cursed the lives of hundreds of others!”
“Cursed them?” Aries stared, barely aware that the cage had reached the ceiling. “How?”
“Remember Glauce?” said Medea mischievously.
Aries thought back to the beautiful young woman for whom Jason had left Medea. According to gossip in the Underworld, Medea had pretended to give her blessing to their marriage and had made Glauce’s wedding dress. Woven from swans’ down it was the most beautiful thing the new bride had ever seen, at least until she tried it on, whereupon it burst into flames, engulfing her in an inferno.
“Then the rumours were true?” gasped Aries. “You killed her?”
Medea nodded brightly. “I suppose you could call her my inspiration! She was my first attempt. But it worked, didn’t it? Your fleece, my magic, what a perfect combination! After that it was easy. Julius Caesar, the great Roman emperor, wanted a fancy purple cloak to wear to the Senate. So not the colour for hiding stab marks and bloodstains.” The sorceress laughed thinly. “Cleopatra was next. She loved the softness of my linen kaftan. And so did the asp that killed her in it! Must have, because they found it hours later, still curled up in the folds of her dress. Then there was Boudicca, William the Conqueror, Sir Walter Raleigh, Marie Antoinette!”
Aries reeled back against the bars of the cage as Medea went on, adding name after name, appalled at what she was saying. His fleece had been responsible for every one of these deaths? His mind whirled, filled with a blizzard of confusion and horror. Medea, meanwhile, was clearly warming to her subject.
“American presidents, film stars, highwaymen and pirates, I’ve dressed them all, though to tell you the truth, men in uniform were always my favourite! Like Captain Edward Smith!” She fluttered her hands together, remembering. “What a devil he was for gold brocade! Still, at least he looked his best on his trip to the bottom of the sea after Titanic hit the iceberg.”
Aries stared at her, trying to take in the dreadful things she was saying.
“They all died because my fleece was sewn into their clothes?”
“Doomed from the glorious moment they put them on!” trilled Medea, clasping her hands together. “Ooh! Nearly forgot to tell you the best bit! That dress Rose said you found in the museum? The one that was so snuggly-wuggly you fell asleep on it?”
“Anne Boleyn’s?” said Aries, dimly aware that the cage was now moving sideways, sliding along beneath the ceiling, to line up over the tank.
Medea threw back her head and laughed. “Remember the line of golden stitches around the neckline?”
“My fleece?” Aries voice was little more than a whisper.
Medea smiled triumphantly. “That’s why you were so drawn to it.”
There was a thick popping sound and Aries looked down, suddenly remembering the slurping green goo roiling beneath his cage. He glanced over at Fred, who bounced up and down on the spot, chuckling and turned the winch handle again. The cage juddered and jerked downwards.
“All dead.” Aries shook his head sadly. “And the last tuft?”
“Hazel Praline,” said Medea, examining her glossy red nails. “I’ll be sewing it into the dress she wears to this afternoon’s premiere.”
Aries hadn’t the faintest idea who Hazel Praline was, but he was sure that she was in terrible danger.
And all because of his fleece.
The thought made him feel dreadfully sick. And he might well have thrown up, there and then, had he not been distracted at that moment by the first slimy green tendrils wobbling through the floor bars of the cage and slithering towards his hooves.
“And to think I was resigned to the end of my curses,” she sighed. “But you came back, Aries, and thanks to you, I’ll soon have the gold of the gods to inject into every sheep I own!” She paused, her eyes widening in delight as the slime turned his golden-brown hooves to the colour of mouldy seaweed. “Imagine all those Golden Fleeces!”
Except Aries was no longer listening.
He was too busy looking down, thinking about teeth, thousands of them, needle-sharp and nibbling away from inside the cold slop that was now rising up his hocks. He closed his eyes to shut out the acid brightness of the room and knew that this was the end: this was the place that his blinding obsession and stupidity had led him, to this one terrible moment.
“Well,” said Medea brightly. “Much as I hate leaving a party that’s in full swing, I have to go. Can’t be late for Hazel!”
Forcing open his eyes Aries met the sorceress’s amused gaze. “Wait!”
“What for?” she said impatiently. “The traditional last request?”
There was a muffled thud as the cage settled onto the floor of the tank. Now the deadly bacteria frothed up quickly, enveloping his belly and closing over his back like a sodden blanket.
“You’ve won,” said Aries, blinking back the tears that threatened to roll down his muzzle. He took a deep breath just as a particularly vile-looking bubble burst, squelching clammy green slop into his face. “You’ll soon have all the gold you need for your wickedness. Please just let Alex and Rose go home.”
Medea tilted her head. For a moment she seemed to consider his request and he felt his heart lift. Then her face grew as hard as marble again.
“Actually,” she said lightly, “I’ll never let either of them go!” And so saying, she walked out of the room with Fred.
The doors swooshed shut behind them and for a moment Aries heard the click of Medea’s shoes and rumble of Fred’s coarse laughter fade away down the corridor. Then the gruesome sucking noise of the mixture took over, filling his ears with the revolting slurp, burp and dribble of his own unhappy fate.