Medea stood draped in the darkness of the wings of the Leicester Square Luxe, watching Hazel rehearse her welcome speech one last time. The stage in front of the cinema screen had been dressed to look like a rodeo with stacks of hay bales, hung ropes and saddles. Dwarfed by a neon sign of a silhouetted rider on a bucking bronco, and talking in whispers to the closed theatre curtains, the young singer looked deliciously vulnerable and just thinking about what was to happen later on released a swarm of butterflies34 behind Medea’s ribs. As usual she had no idea of how her curse would work or how Hazel would actually die, but as she looked around the stage, her mind popped with exquisite possibilities.
That tangle of electrical cables looped along the front of the stage looked promising. So did the buckets of water ready for the star’s bouquets, which had been left far too close to the panel of lighting controls. Overhead, a galaxy of glittering mirrors twisted on wires, ready to be spotlit and send splashes of light dancing around the stage, while just in front of that gloriously deep drop into the orchestra pit, the stage shone, smooth and slippery. A cold tingle of pleasure wrapped itself around the sorceress’s heart like an octopus tentacle and she clasped her hands gleefully to her chest, knowing that the young star’s performance would be truly unforgettable.
Unforgettable was one word that Rose might have used to describe her day.
However, it wouldn’t have been top of her list. Words like unbelievable, mind-twisting and heart-stoppingly terrifying35 would all have been much higher up.
After bursting in on Medea and Hazel that morning, Rose felt sure that she would be in serious trouble. And yet, the sorceress had carried on as if nothing had happened, simply promising Rose a ‘little chat’ over their post-show meal together, all about how important it was to follow her instructions.
Rose shivered.
Perhaps the sorceress intended to convince her that she’d imagined the whole thing?
Or, bewitch her into forgetting anything inconvenient?
Either way, Rose didn’t intend to stick around to find out. But for Hazel she wouldn’t even be sitting in the theatre now. Yet despite the clammy fear that had made her skin freeze back at the hotel, she’d known that she couldn’t simply abandon her new friend to whatever horrible fate Medea had planned. And even if she’d felt like running away, she couldn’t have, because she’d been immediately escorted out of the hotel here by Pandemic, which was why she was now here, pinned down by his bony elbow, in one of the red velvet seats of the VIP section.
Around her, famous actors chatted with pop stars, laughing and hugging each other. People that she’d only ever seen in magazines and on television were standing right in front of her. But Rose didn’t feel remotely star-struck. Instead, as Hazel’s band took their places in the orchestra pit, all she felt was a clawing sicklike fear in the pit of her stomach, knowing that something horrible was going to happen.
Clutching the arms of her cinema seat, her mind flicked back to the terrible image of the pink coffin she’d seen projected behind the singer on the wall at the hotel. And of Medea crouched at the singer’s feet, frantically stitching. Something about the pink dress, her mind insisted, something about that wonderful dress would harm Hazel.
Hazel’s three bodyguards, each dressed in black suits and pink cummerbunds, lined up in front of the stage and for one ridiculous, fleeting moment Rose wondered whether she ought to just go up there and tell them straight. She looked from one to the other, at their stern, unsmiling faces and wondered which man might be most likely to listen. The first, thickset and muscled, with his big bumpy nose that looked like a clump of broccoli? The next, tall and lean, with a military buzz cut? Or the last? With his broad shoulders, thin neck and bald head, he looked like a skittle. And a bad-tempered one, at that.
“Excuse me,” she imagined herself saying. “I have to tell you that Hazel’s dress is dangerous.” She sank back in her seat and sighed heavily. Even to her, it sounded completely nuts.
Sinking further still into her whirl of worry she didn’t notice the lights dimming above her, or the curtains swish back. In fact, it was only when Hazel’s band started to play the opening bars of the film’s title song and everyone around her began clapping that she looked up to see Steven Speedbug, the film’s director, striding across the stage. And, as he stopped to take a bow, the altogether more shadowy figure stalking up the aisle.
A moment later Medea took the seat beside her.
There are many wonderful sights in our capital city of London but a flock of sheep hurtling behind a boy draped in a venomous snake down Piccadilly is not traditionally one of them. However, far too excited to settle for a lunch of even the juiciest roses, the sheep had insisted on coming with Alex and Aries to help find Rose and save Hazel. Knowing that the best chance they had to do this was to disrupt and stop the show, Alex had quickly come up with a plan, a simple one: act like sheep and don’t talk. Now, with Hex whispering in Alex’s ear like a GPS36, they surged as a furious grey tide through the centre of town.
Office workers stared open-mouthed from their glass-fronted buildings as the flock poured over traffic islands and spilled across pavements, bringing buses to wheezing standstills and sending shoppers sprinting down stairwells to the Underground. With a deafening cacophony of blaring horns and sheep-related insults rising behind them, the sheep streamed past the swanky Ritz Hotel, snatching mouthfuls of red geraniums from its window boxes and alarming diners who dropped teacups on the black-and-white tiles floor of the Palm Court. They thundered on past the jewellers, causing a goldsmith to bite into a dazzling tiara instead of his custard cream biscuit, whilst at Fortnum & Mason’s the manager did a spectacular war dance in his highly polished shoes, just thinking about all that dung on his prestigious entrance carpet.
On an unstoppable river of hooves, snorts and woolly bottoms, the sheep pounded past the statue of Eros, beneath the flashing neon advertisements wrapped around the tall buildings of Piccadilly Circus and finally swung towards Leicester Square.
“There it isss!” shouted Hex.
Alex looked to see a tall cream-stone building with an ornate ironwork canopy above which the word ‘LUXE’ was spelt out in pink light bulbs. Huge banners of a pretty girl in a white, wide-brimmed hat hung down from its roof. Life-sized cut-outs of the same girl dressed in pink-chequered shirts, jeans and leather boots stood at the top of the steps up to a row of doors above.
“That’s her?” said Alex.
The snake nodded.
Ahead of them a crowd of Hazel’s fans stood chatting in front of the theatre, milling over the swathe of pink carpet, which today had replaced the traditional red one. But not for long. At the sound of muffled hooves, they spun round. Wide-eyed, their yelps of surprise quickly turned into shrieks of panic as they fled squealing, flinging fan rosettes and cowboy hats into the air behind them.
On seeing the chaos outside, theatre staff lunged for the row of doors, trying desperately to slam them closed against the onslaught. But they were too late. Seconds later the sheep stormed the foyer, scattering the staff like human skittles.
“This way!” shouted Alex, spotting a sign which read ‘Rodeo Love Premiere: Screen Six’.
The sheep swirled after him, flying across the foyer like a giant woolly arrow. Sending kiosks of Hazel Praline T-shirts and DVDs flying and journalists diving behind the popcorn counters, they flooded after him through the archway leading to the screens. At the far end of the poster-lined hallway, the number six glowed over a set of doors and, snatching up a life-sized cut-out of Hazel, Alex led the sheep towards it.
Hazel Praline walked on stage to a cheering crowd. Dappled with swirling dots of mirror light, she glittered like a pink diamond.
“Hello, London!”
As the twang of country guitars rang out, Rose squirmed furiously beneath Pandemic’s grip, desperate to do something, anything, to stop the show. But the more she tried to twist free, the tighter his fingers clenched around her arm.
Hazel walked to the front of the stage, gracefully stepping over a rather untidy cluster of electrical cables, and began singing.
Love in the rain an’ I’ve no umbrella,
Falling down like rhinestones an’ glitterin’ like tears.
Suddenly the doors at the back of the theatre slammed open. Shocked, Hazel dropped her microphone and, squinting against the spotlights, tried to see what was happening. As her band strummed to a stop, a pounding drone of hooves filled the darkness. Rose gasped to see both aisles filled with moving shadowy bulks. A second later the lights snapped on and the bulks became sheep. Some had Hazel Praline banners shredded in their horns; others had pink rosettes stuck to their rumps; all had their heads down as they stormed towards the stage.
Either side, people clambered up onto their seats, clutching one another, squealing as the odd curious sheep broke off from the flock, stuck its nose into an open handbag or snatched an expensive coat to chew.
And yet as Rose watched the chaos, she had the weirdest feeling that the sheep were somehow organised into two groups: the ones in the right aisle following an ivory-coloured ram with rippled horns, the ones in the left a tight-fleeced ewe with a bumpy-faced lamb beside her.
Beside her, the sorceress leaped to her feet, and startled, two small grey-faced sheep squealed in alarm and ran faster. Almost, Rose thought, as if they recognised her.
“How in Hades did they get free?” growled Medea.
Get free? Rose sat bolt upright in her seat, her mind spinning, realising that the disruption was no freaky coincidence.
Medea turned back, pausing briefly to smile at the people in the row ahead who were now giving her strange looks, and glared at Pandemic. “The pipes, you fool!”
As Pandemic frantically patted each pocket in turn, the first sheep reached the area in front of the stage and began milling around wildly. Bustling into the rows of seats, they nuzzled the audience and stuffed their muzzles into bags of wine gums. All round, the theatre rang with shrieks and yelps and the soft thud of rolled up programmes walloping woolly rumps.
Two rows further down, Rose saw Mitch Praline leap into the thundering sheep and run with them, his arms spread wide37. “It’s okay, honey!” he shouted, glancing up at Hazel, who stood watching him round-eyed from the stage.
Waving his hat in the air, he began cornering some sheep by the fire doors at the front of the theatre. Of course, back before her rise to stardom, Hazel had loved helping her dad out on the ranch and now, seeing what he was trying to do, she unhooked one of the looped white ropes from the stage dressing and threw it to him.
“You guys!” she called her bodyguards over quickly. “Go help m’daddy!”
Immediately, the men ran to join Mitch, standing behind him with their arms linked like a human fence, stepping towards the five or six sheep he’d split off from the others.
Of course, as the Pralines might have told you, handling awkward animals is much easier on a Texan ranch. Women there rarely scream because their sparkly shoes have squelched into something warm and wet. And there are no action-hero actors making nuisances of themselves by wielding evening jackets like matadors’ capes. Consequently, despite Mitch’s efforts, the theatre now descended into utter bedlam.
In fact, it was just like that film about the great white shark when someone spots a dorsal fin in the water and the swimmers go bananas, charging onto the beach for safety and tripping over one another in the surf.
Apart from the beach, of course.
And the surf.
Oh, all right, and the shark.
People flew out of their seats, squealing and flapping into the aisles, making for the exits.
“Finally!” snarled Medea, as Pandemic plucked a wooden arch of pipes from his coat. She scowled as a flurry of ice-cream pots and programmes rained down on her head, discarded by the audience members sprinting past the end of the row and fixed him with a vicious stare. “Freeze the flock!”
Freeze them, thought Rose, fleetingly wondering how they might possibly stop a herd of sheep in their tracks. Smiling coldly, Pandemic brought the pipes to his lips.
With both hands.
Seizing her chance, she leaped to her feet and kicked his shin hard. As he buckled over, she swept the pipes out of his hand, sending them spinning into the path of the running sheep where they smashed under thundering hooves. Swiftly ducking out of Medea’s reach, she grabbed her rucksack and scrambled over the back of her seat, stepping onto the empty seat of the row behind, and then over again, leaving Medea lunging hopelessly after her. Then, quickly apologising to the few people remaining whom she trod on, squashed or tripped over, she reached the other aisle.
Which was when she spotted Alex, at the back of the stampede, deftly fending off the furious manager of the Luxe using one of Hazel’s cut-outs as a makeshift shield. Beside him, Aries, looking decidedly greener than she remembered, bellowed at the three attendants cowering behind the manager and sent them racing away. Immediately realising that they were behind this wonderful disruption, she punched the air in triumph.
“Alex!” she shouted, stepping into the buffeting sheep to reach him.
He glanced over his shoulder and smiled. “You’re all right!” he yelled, before blocking a thump from the manager with Hazel’s cardboard head.
Lurching backwards, the manager clutched his throbbing hand, collided with a plump old lady in a silver dress and stole, and vanished in a muffle of fake fur and chubby ankles.
Alex ran up to Rose and threw his arms round her.
“I’m so glad to see you!” she exclaimed, reaching down with the other to rub Aries’ brow. “And you!”
It was a lovely group hug moment, apart from the alarming hissing sound that now whistled in her ear, the sort of alarming hissing sound that snakes make when they are being squashed. Drawing back, Rose jumped to see Hex, his eyes glittering with outrage.
“It’s all right,” said Alex. “He’s a friend.”
Now, Hex’s face broke into a wide grin, touched38.
Rose looked at Alex and nodded towards the stage, where Hazel was now on her hands and knees shouting instructions to the bodyguards above a flossy sea of sheep. “You caused all this? So, you know what Medea’s up to?”
“’Fraid so,” replied Alex. He grabbed hold of Rose’s hand and pulled her with him after the sheep. “Come on!”
Together, using the cut-out to force their way through, the four of them jostled their way towards the stage, pushing against the bulldozing crowd that was intent on moving in the opposite direction. Overhead the cinema sound system crackled into life and a polished voice told everyone to stay calm and seated. Not that anyone did, of course, and as Rose looked at the crush of people wedged in uncomfortably in the narrow aisles, she began to feel a glimmer of hope. After all, she reasoned as she sidestepped a cluster of sheep sharing seat stuffing like candy floss, with no audience, no music and nowhere to sit, there couldn’t be a show, could there?
No.
Meaning that in just a few minutes Hazel would be offstage, out of that dress and away from danger.
Well, actually, no, again.
Because as much as I hate to be a spoilsport, I do have to remind you that we still have a deadly sorceress in our midst. The sort, say, whose face might at that precise second be lit up by a spume of silver stars exploding over her head, wholly unnoticed by the people dashing past.
Or Rose and the others.
Shame, really.
Meanwhile, on the patch of carpet below the stage, Mitch had managed to string up a makeshift roped corral and had penned in six sheep. Above him, Hazel shouted sheep-catching instructions to her bodyguards whilst wrestling another hay bale from the set dressing to throw down. Turning, she stopped to peer out over the auditorium.
“Where are those pretty stars comin’ from?” she said.
“Ssstars?” Hex’s voice was deadly serious.
Shooting up from Alex’s shoulders, like a walking stick tossed by a tap dancer, he scanned the cinema, high over the sea of bobbing heads.
“What’s happening?” demanded Alex.
“Medea!” hissed Hex, twisting into a panicky figure of eight. “She’sss casssting a ssspell.”
Horrified, Rose and Alex strained to catch a glimpse of the sorceress. Craning their necks to peer past the mayhem in the aisles, they saw her turning on the spot in the gap in front of her seat, twirling her arms above her head.
“But she looks like she’s dancing!” said Rose, confused.
“Magic needsss movement!” explained Hex. “It generatesss the energy to make the ssspell work!”
For a moment Rose stared, fascinated.
“But why?” Aries rattled his hooves furiously. “The fleece curse doesn’t need her help!”
“No,” hissed Hex. “But no one’sss ever tried to ssstop it before, have they? Now—”
Hex’s voice was lost beneath the sound of a soft whump. Turning, they saw one of the corralled sheep lying on its side, its legs stuck out, its face a mask of shock.
Rose clasped a hand to her mouth. “It’s not—?” She stopped, unable to say the word.
“No.” Alex shook his head quickly. “It’s still breathing. It’s just been stunned.”
“Stunned?” spluttered Aries.
Behind them, a second sheep jerked rigid and keeled over. Then a third star-jumped in the air, froze and landed like a woolly starfish.
“Ssslumber-bound,” replied Hex. “It’sss her sssheep-sssleep ssspell.”
“Her what?” said Rose.
“It’sss how ssshe captured them from the fieldsss in the firssst place!” He grimaced as sheep dropped in the aisles, the orchestra pit and vanished suddenly between rows of seats. “It’sss one of her mossst basssic ssspells”
And Hex was right.
Sorceresses, you see, can’t use their best magic in public. Partly because spells take time, special ingredients, fire and ancient tools, but mostly because you simply can’t turn someone into a wart frog without passers-by badgering you about it.
Around them the thumps grew closer together as more and more sheep fell, turning the theatre into something that was beginning to resemble a storehouse for merry-go-round sheep-shaped rides. Trapped in the corral, Mitch, together with Hazel’s bodyguards, vanished under an avalanche of toppling sheep.
“They’ll all be asleep soon!” muttered Aries.
Rose looked around her and realised that people were no longer panicking. Instead of running they stood in the aisles. They chatted and pointed instead of screaming.
Relief brightened their faces.
Relief that finally the chaos was all over.
Relief that everything would soon go back to normal.
“We’ve got to break the spell!” said Rose desperately.
“Then ssstop her moving!” answered Hex.
Obviously, this was excellent advice if you didn’t happen to be trapped in a cinema whose aisles were jammed by human and sheep sardines at the time.
Unless you were with the strongest ram in history, of course.
“Aries!” said Alex. “You can get through to her!”
There was no reply.
He looked down to see the ram, a deep sigh flapping his lips, his eyes drooping slowly closed.
“Not him as well!” squealed Rose.
“Aries!” yelled Alex. He bent down and lifted the ram’s ear. “Wake up!”
Aries jumped to attention. “Whatisit?” he spluttered.
“Ssstand ssstill!” commanded Hex, slithering down Alex’s arm onto the ram’s brow where he promptly began wrapping himself tightly around Aries’ ears, twisting from side to side to make a squirmy turban.
“The sspell’s a dark lullaby,” he explained, looking up at Alex and Rose between loops. “Only creaturesss with cloven hoovesss can hear it. We have to block hisss hearing before it takesss effect.”
Drowsily, Aries watched the snake weave from side to side above his eyes. But a few seconds later, after Hex had slithered back under his own loops to whisper down the ram’s ear, Aries was fully alert and knew exactly what he must do. Bustling into an empty row of seats to reach the aisle that led to Medea’s seat, and protected from the sorceress’s dangerous words by his own personal mamba-muffler, he took a deep breath and ran.
Meanwhile, Alex and Rose turned back towards the stage and, bracing themselves behind the cut-out of Hazel, began forcing their way forwards against the buffeting crowd until they reached a patch of clear seats that would take them to the front of the stage.
Three rows behind them, Aries reached the aisle, stomped out, turned and lowered his head, arranging his horns in front of the vast wall of tightly packed people stumbling towards him and pushed.
Hard.
Force powered up his legs and along his broad back, sending quivers through the straining tendons in his neck and wild shivers down his flanks. Sweat poured off his brow. But in his heart, fury rose like blistering lava in a volcano.
Fury at how Medea was still mistreating the sheep forced him one big step forwards, scooping an elegant old lady off her feet and into his horns.
Fury at what she’d done with his fleece catalysed another three steps that bundled two men and a boy scout into his encompassing horns.
Fury about all the innocent people she’d killed for her miserable sport fired him into a slow clop, gathering two squealing usherettes and a Dorset ewe as he thrust on.
But feeling a seething rage at what she’d tried to do to his friends sent him shooting forwards. Like a monster snowplough plunging through a drift, he caused people and sheep to spill out of his horns, toppling either side into the empty banks of seats, as he powered up the aisle to draw level with Medea.
Oblivious, the sorceress continued to twirl, her eyes closed in a rapture of spite, her hands spinning wildly in front of her.
Beside her, Pandemic’s deep snores rattled the air. Being half-goat, of course, and owning the most splendid pair of cloven hooves himself, he too had fallen prey to her spell.
Exchanging a look with Aries, Hex released his hold on the ram’s ears and looped round and round on Aries’ back. Then, using the coils like a giant spring, he threw himself into the air, flying, just as his grandfather had taught him to bounce over mangrove swamps of Africa, and whipped around the sorceress’s frantic wrists.
Medea snapped her eyes open and squealed with frustration before meeting Aries’ furious glare.
But only for a moment.
Spinning round, he kicked out his back legs with the force of a small truck and pitched Medea off her feet. Shrieking, she shot up towards the ceiling, her arms bound in front of her, and for a moment she seemed to hang like a furious exclamation mark before arcing over to dive head first into a stockpile of snoozing sheep. There was a whump, several surprised gasps and then nothing. Aries stretched up his head, delighted to see only the sorceress’s feet sticking out of a now muttering, waking heap of sheep, and Hex sliding away into the shadows.
And then the first scream ripped through the auditorium.
Horrified, Rose and Alex looked up from hurdling over seat backs to see Hazel tugging furiously at the skirt of her dress. It was stapled firm to the stage by a vicious-looking shard of mirror. At the same instant two flashes of silver fell from the area above the stage, stabbing the wooden boards with the ferocity of thrown knives.
“Come on!” shouted Alex.
Rose leaped over the next two sets of seats and, drawing level with the stage, looked up.
Suspended from scaffolding, the mirrors that had previously made such pretty twinkles around the stage now swung crazily back and forth like enchanted pendulums, swishing higher and higher each time until they snapped their threads.
And dropped.
Momentarily frozen, Rose realised that this was the way the curse would kill Hazel. Her heart hammered in her ears, thumping against the swish of mirrors falling faster now in a sudden shimmering shower that tacked Hazel’s skirt to the stage like silver stitches sewn by an invisible hand.
Beside her, Alex dragged the cut-out of Hazel over his head and, as she reached out to help him, she met Hazel’s terrified eyes.
“I’m coming too,” she said, sliding beneath the cardboard beside him.
Together they sprinted up the stage steps and threw themselves into the sparkling storm of mirrors. Each seizing one of Hazel’s arms they yanked her, yelling, off her feet. Behind them the fabric ripped, like a chorus of tiny screams, as all three of them flew backwards towards the cinema screen. In the split second before all the lights went out, Rose glimpsed the remains of the dress billow up from the floor after them, as menacing as a monstrous pink jellyfish. Then everything was in darkness. A darkness spliced by splintering wood as every last mirror fell in a torrent of slashing glass.