The Chicken's Curse

by Frances Watts

  Livia clutched his arm so tightly Felix let out a chicken-like squawk. ‘Hey!’ he said.

  ‘It’s him,’ she hissed. ‘Nasty.’

  Looking around, Felix spied their pursuer moving through the crowd just as the big bald man spotted him.

  With a roar, Nasty charged towards them.

  ‘Quick, Livia – this way!’ Felix yelled.

  They took off at a sprint down a street lined with textile merchants. As they ran, Livia pulled over some bolts of cloth. Nasty was forced to slow down to navigate them as they rolled into his path.

  The street opened out into a square filled with market stalls piled high with fruit and vegetables, cheeses and baked goods. They ducked and weaved down the aisles, apologising to startled shoppers as they went.

  At the far side of the square, Felix stopped short. ‘Livia, look – this shop is called Sami’s Sacred Carpets and the sign has a golden chicken painted on it.’

  Livia, who had continued running, raced back to grab Felix by the arm. ‘Come on,’ she urged. ‘We don’t have time to shop.’

  ‘But it might be a good omen,’ Felix argued.

  Livia tugged on Felix’s arm. ‘Not now,’ she said impatiently. ‘We need to find somewhere to hide.’

  Felix stepped forwards, dragging Livia with him, until they were both standing on a carpet draped over the dusty street. ‘Cleopatra hid inside a rolled-up carpet,’ he said excitedly. ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could do the same?’

  At once the carpet began to shake violently beneath them, and Felix and Livia were both flung to the ground.

  ‘What is it?’ Livia cried. ‘An earthquake?’

  Before Felix could respond he found himself being turned over and over. He felt an elbow in his nose and a knee in his stomach, as if all the sharpest parts of Livia were being jammed into the softest parts of Felix. It must be an earthquake, he decided, except … The turning ceased. He was wrapped in the coils of the carpet, unable to move, but by shifting his eyes back in their sockets he could just see a circle of light, and in that circle he had a glimpse of the square through which they had run. He heard a grunt, then Livia said, ‘I think my chin is stuck under your armpit.’

  ‘Ssshh,’ Felix responded. ‘Here comes Nasty.’

  The bald man was lumbering through the market, elbowing people out of the way, swivelling his head from left to right as he searched for Felix and Livia.

  ‘What’s he doing?’ Livia whispered.

  ‘Pushing over an old woman’s cart full of grapes and yelling at her.’

  A crowd was gathering now. Nasty tried to fight his way through but he was surrounded. Felix could hear him bellowing like an outraged bull as the crowd slowly pushed him back, back, out of the square.

  ‘He’s gone,’ Felix said at last.

  ‘Good,’ said Livia. ‘Your plan worked. I wish you’d given me some warning, though – I didn’t know what was going on.’

  ‘It wasn’t my plan,’ Felix said.

  ‘And did you have to roll the carpet so tight? I feel like I’m being strangled. If Nasty really has gone, you can loosen it.’

  Abruptly the carpet unfurled.

  ‘That’s better,’ said Livia as they lay somewhat dazed on the carpet, which was flat once more. ‘Now, what were you saying?’

  ‘I said it wasn’t my plan. Livia, I think …’ Felix hesitated. What he was about to say sounded ridiculous. ‘I think the carpet did it. I think the carpet can understand us.’

  ‘That sandstorm yesterday was very disorientating,’ Livia said with concern. ‘Perhaps you’re still a little dizzy.’ She sat up and reached into the satchel for the waterskin. ‘Here, drink some of this. Does your head hurt?’

  Felix waved the flask away. ‘I’m serious, Livia. I had nothing to do with what just happened. The carpet did it on its own.’

  ‘What are you saying? That you think it’s a—’ she glanced up at the sign with the golden chicken ‘—a sacred carpet?’

  Felix raised his palms. ‘Maybe not sacred, but it could be a magic carpet. Remember what Gisgo said on the Tarshish? He’d seen carpets that could fly.’

  ‘You didn’t actually believe his stories, did you? He also told us he’d seen mermaids, remember? And snake charmers.’ Her mouth dropped open, and Felix guessed that she was remembering the snake moving to the music of a flute in the bazaar they’d walked through.

  ‘I think he was telling the truth,’ Felix persisted. ‘Who would make up such a thing as a flying carpet?’

  As he spoke, he felt a slight rocking sensation. Once again, he feared an earthquake, but no – the movement wasn’t that strong; it was barely a tremor. Then he realised what it was. Slowly, almost imperceptibly, the carpet was rising. Felix stared at the ground, incredulous.

  ‘Livia,’ he said, pointing.

  She was still talking. ‘Okay, so he might really have seen a snake charmer, though that stuff about mermaids and sea monsters was definitely made up. And I can tell you one thing for sure: there is no such thing as a magic carpet.’

  Unexpectedly, they started falling. The carpet had tipped them off!

  ‘Are you quite sure about that, Livia?’ Felix asked, rubbing his knee where it had hit the ground.

  Livia was silent, rubbing her hip. Finally, she said, ‘Well, it’s a cranky magic carpet.’

  Their conversation was interrupted by a voice that matched the carpet for crankiness. ‘What are you doing on my carpet? Go away!’

  A short, wide man with dark, narrow eyes was glaring at them and making shooing motions with his hands.

  ‘Fine,’ said Felix, standing up. ‘We won’t buy your carpet. Come on, Livia.’

  At once the crankiness was exchanged for a syrupy tone. ‘Wait! You want to buy this carpet?’

  ‘Felix …’ said Livia.

  ‘Not anymore,’ Felix told the carpet seller.

  ‘I’ll give you a good price,’ the man said in a wheedling tone.

  ‘How good?’ Felix wanted to know.

  ‘Well, not that good,’ the seller hedged. ‘After all, this is a very special carpet.’

  Felix nodded knowingly. ‘You mean it’s magic.’

  The man stared at him. ‘Magic? What nonsense. There’s no such thing as a magic carpet.’

  ‘Then what’s so special about it?’ Felix asked, looking down. The carpet appeared quite ordinary to him, slightly worn, with geometric patterns in shades of red, blue and white.

  ‘It comes from far, far away in Anatolia,’ the seller replied. ‘It was brought to me by a traveller who said it belonged to King Pharnaces II.’

  ‘A likely story,’ Felix said. If King Pharnaces II had a magic carpet, why had he been defeated by Caesar? ‘It doesn’t look like the carpet of a king. It’s kind of shabby.’

  The carpet rippled slightly, as if to disagree, and that decided him.

  ‘Give me a gold coin, Livia.’

  ‘What? No!’ She hugged the satchel to her chest.

  ‘Please.’ Lowering his voice, he added, ‘Before Nasty returns.’

  Her eyes darted towards the market square and then, clearly reluctant to waste any more time, she reached into the satchel for the box of coins and extracted one. Reluctantly, she held it out for the seller to examine.

  He raised his eyebrows appreciatively. ‘Sold!’ he declared. ‘Young sir, young miss, you are now the proud owners of the carpet of King Pharnaces II.’ As if fearing they might change their minds and demand the coin back, he hastily rolled up the carpet, thrust it at Felix and said quickly, ‘Thank-you-for-shopping-at-Sami’s-Sacred-Carpets-have-a-nice-day.’

  They strode off down the street, Felix with the carpet under his left arm and clutching the stick with his right hand.

  ‘What did you buy a carpet for?’ Livia exploded. ‘Are you seriously intending to walk all the way to Tripoli carrying a carpet? Well, don’t expect me to help.’ And she stalked off down the street, fuming.

  Felix unrolled the carpet an
d stepped onto it.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

  Nothing happened.

  ‘Fly!’

  Still nothing. He was starting to feel a little foolish, standing on a carpet in the middle of the street.

  ‘Please,’ he begged. ‘Please fly.’

  And then, just as he was beginning to doubt the carpet’s powers, it slowly began to rise.

  ‘Yes!’ said Felix, jubilant. ‘Can you catch up to Livia?’ Then he added hastily, ‘Please.’

  Felix planted his legs wide apart for balance, and the carpet cruised slowly along the street just above the ground. They were gaining on Livia, gaining on her …

  ‘Whoa!’ he cried.

  Livia jumped, startled, as the carpet bumped her.

  Spinning around, she fixed Felix with an aggrieved look. ‘What did you do that for?’

  She drew in her breath as she realised he was hovering several inches above the ground. She glanced at his feet.

  ‘It must be some kind of trick,’ Livia said suspiciously.

  The carpet rammed her and she yelped.

  ‘Okay, it’s not a trick.’ She rubbed her shin. ‘Why does it have to be such a grump?’

  ‘Stop being so rude to it,’ Felix chided.

  ‘All right, I’m sorry,’ she said to the carpet. Then to Felix: ‘But I still don’t understand why you wasted one of Cleopatra’s coins on it.’

  ‘Because flying to the coast will be much faster than walking,’ Felix explained.

  Livia regarded the shabby carpet doubtfully. ‘Do you really think this thing can get us all the way to Tripoli?’

  In reply, Felix pointed up the street and said: ‘Please, carpet, fly to the temple and back as fast as you can.’

  The carpet took off at such a speed Felix was flung backwards. He had to cling on to the side as it careened down the street, stopped abruptly mere metres from the temple, then performed a wide sweeping turn before speeding back to where Livia stood gaping at them, her eyes wide in amazement.

  ‘Now do you see why I bought the carpet?’ Felix asked, unable to keep the smugness from his voice.

  ‘Yes!’ said Livia. ‘I love the carpet!’

  The carpet rippled with pleasure.

  ‘Then what are you waiting for?’ said Felix. ‘Let’s get out of here!’

  Chapter 17

  They flew day and night. It wasn’t always comfortable. Sometimes the carpet dozed off and fell from the sky. Felix and Livia – asleep themselves – would be woken as they hit the ground with an almighty thump. They both had some rather nasty bruises as a result. Then there were the whirlwinds that came upon them swiftly in the desert, spinning the carpet in circles until they were all so dizzy they didn’t know which way was which.

  But these discomforts were a small price to pay, they agreed. After their escape from the Roman patrol in Alexandria and then from Merybad and Nasty in the desert, it was a relief to stop looking over their shoulders constantly. Plus, flying over the endless sands on a carpet was much more comfortable than travelling by camel or walking. ‘And the carpet doesn’t talk,’ Livia noted with some relief.

  Felix and Livia, meanwhile, had nothing to do but talk.

  ‘You’ve told me about your mother and your sisters,’ Livia remarked on the third day, ‘but you haven’t mentioned your father.’

  It had been a long time since Felix had thought of his father. ‘Dad was in the army, but he was killed in Armorica,’ he explained. ‘He was in General Porcius’s legion too – that’s why General Porcius gave me the post as his servant.’

  Felix could hardly remember his father; he had laughed a lot and had a red beard, and he had called Felix ‘Little Red’ and said that one day Felix would have a red beard just like his own. But because he was a soldier, he had been away more often than he was home. After he died, Felix was so used to his father being gone that he sometimes forgot to miss him. He thought of General Porcius more often than his father these days, probably because he had spent so much more time with him. And he had been a good master; though the general was unlucky, he had never been unkind. For a moment Felix felt bad for letting him down. Then he recalled the Nervians.

  As they soared across the desert under cloudless skies, it occurred to Felix that their return to Rome might not be quite so cloudless. In fact, both he and Livia were returning under a cloud. Desertion from the Roman army was a serious crime – though since he wasn’t actually a soldier, and his desertion hadn’t helped the enemy in any way, he could hope for mercy. While he no doubt had consequences to face, it was Livia he feared for the most. She was thinking no further ahead than freeing her brother (something that Felix thought privately might well prove impossible even for her – and that was if they made it to Rome in time), but what would happen to her next?

  He was trying to decide whether to raise the subject with her when Livia let out a whoop of delight. ‘Felix, look! Is that the sea?’

  ‘We can’t be there already,’ Felix said.

  But they were. Thanks to the carpet, the journey to the busy port of Tripoli had taken three days rather than ten. And within an hour of arriving at the docks Felix and Livia had secured passage on a ship bound for Ostia with a cargo of cereals and oil. From being hopeless, there was now a possibility they would reach Rome in time, though it would be touch and go.

  ‘Our luck is changing,’ Felix insisted as he heaved the carpet up the gangway of the Minerva; it seemed to grow heavier when it was tired. ‘And it’s all thanks to the sacred chicken.’

  ‘The chicken?’ said Livia, puzzled. ‘How do you figure that?’

  ‘Remember the shop where we bought the carpet? There was a golden chicken on the sign and it sold sacred carpets. That made me think of the sacred chicken, which is why I stopped. And that led us to the magic carpet.’ He patted the rug affectionately.

  ‘But I thought the chicken had cursed us, and that’s why we’ve ended up so far off course?’

  ‘Hmm, that’s true,’ Felix conceded. ‘Maybe it means that wherever the chicken is now, it’s happy, and the curse has been lifted.’

  ‘Cursing? Who’s cursing?’ asked a small, round, weather-beaten man standing at the top of the gangplank. ‘Get the flipper-fisted flounder over here. I’m the captain, and the only one doing the cursing on this ship is me.’ He turned a protuberant pair of eyes on Felix and Livia. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘I’m Livia and this is Felix,’ Livia reminded the captain. ‘You agreed to take us aboard in exchange for two gold coins.’

  ‘Oh yes, that’s right,’ said Captain Hanno. ‘Welcome aboard, you jibbering starfish spleens!’

  The funny thing about the cursing captain, Felix decided, was that he didn’t seem like an angry or aggressive man. Rather, he seemed to take delight in the imaginative string of colourful curses he directed at random passers-by. And though Captain Hanno might be odd, his ship was a beauty. Instead of rowers, the Minerva relied on a single square sail and a complicated system of rigging to shear through the water at great speed – which was exactly what they were doing a week or so into their voyage, as Felix and Livia strolled the deck.

  ‘So, if you’re right, and the sacred chicken has blessed us,’ said Livia, ‘Caesar will be so glad to get these coins from Alexandria—’

  ‘What’s left of them,’ Felix interjected.

  ‘—that he’ll release my brother and we’ll live happily ever after.’

  ‘Will you be freed from slavery?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Livia confidently.

  Felix wasn’t sure whether the coins were really so valuable, nor if the chicken’s powers extended that far – though they might, he reasoned – but he was pleased to see Livia feeling so cheerful.

  His pleasant musings were interrupted by an unwelcome cry from the crow’s nest. ‘Pirates on the starboard bow!’

  Livia ran to the side of the deck with Felix close behind.

  ‘No!’ yelled Livia, pounding the rail. ‘We d
on’t have time for this! We need to get to Rome!’

  One of the ship’s mates came to lean on the rail beside them. He didn’t seem in the least perturbed by the arrival of the pirates. ‘Oh, don’t worry,’ he said. ‘The captain will handle them.’

  Sure enough, Captain Hanno was racing to the ship’s side – and now he didlook angry, Felix observed.

  Roaring and red-faced, he waved his cutlass and let loose a string of curses.

  ‘You flestering crab kidneys!

  ‘Come on, you scrabulous anchovy lungs!’

  The pirates on the advancing ship, who’d been roaring and red-faced themselves, grew silent as the captain’s bluster increased in both volume and imagination.

  ‘I’ll have you, you bloopering octopus bladders!

  ‘Attack me, will you, you snivelling scallop stomachs?!’

  The cursing captain’s crew watched on impassively.

  ‘Pirates always seem to find the captain’s tirades most unnerving,’ the sailor near them said quietly out of the corner of his mouth.

  The pirates seemed to shrink and shrivel under the captain’s onslaught. Finally, a small, meek voice floated across the water from the pirate ship. ‘Turn about.’

  And the pirates turned their ship around and fled.

  The rest of the voyage to Ostia passed without further incident, and they reached the port on a cloudy spring day. They were so close now, only fifteen miles from Rome.

  Felix and Livia disembarked onto a quay lined with enormous two-storey warehouses, each painted with a sign advertising its business. Everywhere they looked, people were in motion. Amphorae of grain and olive oil were being ferried from ship to shore, while barrels of garum, the pungent fish oil, were transferred to barges that would transport them up the Tiber river directly to Rome. Outside a brick building painted with a lighthouse – the symbol of Ostia itself – they saw two men loading a cart with blocks of salt, probably cut from the salt flats just outside the town.

  Livia approached them. ‘Excuse me, when do Caesar’s games start?’ she asked.