by Lucy Coats
Hera strode back to her chariot, and Demon somehow managed to get up and follow her. The peacocks pecked him as he passed them. It hurt, but Demon was too glad to be alive to care . . . and at least they hadn’t drawn blood. He’d had much worse from the beasts in the Stables, anyway.
Hera thumped her staff on the chariot floor. “Sit,” she commanded.
Demon sat by her feet, taking care to make himself very small and unobtrusive. Then, quite suddenly, the peacocks wheeled around and started to run. The chariot swooshed into the air, and the dreadful shrieking started up again. Demon sat on his hands to prevent himself from clutching at Hera’s robe as they rose higher and higher and then suddenly plunged down with a stomach-sickening lurch, through the misty barrier and toward earth.
Where were they going? Was Hera taking him home to his mom? Demon had about a millisecond’s worth of hope before he remembered. The queen of the heavens had a job for him. Quite soon after that, the chariot thumped to a halt, and the shrieking stopped again. There was a smell of rotting eggs in the air, and something else . . . something that smelled like blood and fire.
Hera screamed. It was not a scream of fear, but a scream of rage. Demon clapped his hands over his ears, but it was no good. The scream got into every pore of his body. He felt himself begin to heat up. All the trees burst into flames and then died into small piles of black cinders that blew around in the angry breeze.
“Pleeease,” he moaned, feeling the tips of his fingers begin to burn. The scream stopped abruptly, and Hera picked him up by the back of his slightly singed tunic.
“Look,” she snarled, shaking him like a rat.
Demon looked as best as he could with his body being whipped back and forth. He sucked his sore fingers. Offy and Yukus were silent around his neck, obviously too scared to move.
Lying on the edge of a green and murky swamp was a truly hideous creature. It had nine charred neck stumps, none of which had a head attached. Eight of the obviously chopped-off heads were lying about on the blackened and trampled grass. The ninth head was nowhere to be seen, and the creature looked very dead. Hera flung Demon down and dropped to her knees.
“Poor little Hydra,” she crooned, patting its thick green hide. “Did that nasty Heracles cut off your pretty heads, then? Never mind, my sweet, we’ll get you all mended again.”
She got up and turned to Demon, who lay wheezing and panting on the ground, trying to get back the breath she’d knocked out of him. Her voice was no longer crooning. The rusty knife blades were back.
“Mend my pet,” she said. “Prove you deserve your job as stable boy, Pan’s son, or I’ll send you down to Tartarus as a snack for those revolting hundred-armed monsters quicker than you can say ‘poo chute.’”
Demon had already struggled to his feet and was heading toward the horribly mangled beast. He began picking up heads and loading them carefully into the back of the chariot.
“Is this more of that horrible Heracles’s work, Your Goddessness?” he asked, his hatred of the so-called hero making him brave enough to speak.
“Yes,” said Hera. She looked sideways at the swamp, which began to boil, stinking even worse than it had before.
“Can’t you do something about him, Your Goddessness?” asked Demon, who felt angrier than ever with Heracles at the state the poor beast was in.
He began stroking the Hydra’s rough skin. It felt limp and cold, but he knew that would change up on Olympus. He remembered the griffin telling him on his first day in the Stables that it was only on earth that the immortal beasts could be “killed.” He hoped that was true, or he was definitely going to be a hundred-armed monster snack. Hera snarled.
“Insolent stable brat. I’m trying. But Zeus insists that I play by his rules and set the vile wretch a whole lot of impossible tasks. Otherwise I would have blasted that lowlife hero from the earth already. I can’t believe he got past my lovely pet alive—he must have had help from Athena. They’ll both pay for that.” She pointed her staff at him. The lotus flowers on it spat sparks. “Now hurry up and stop wasting my time with impertinent questions.”
Demon hurried. He wrapped his silver rope around the Hydra and with great difficulty dragged its mangled body over to the chariot. Then he heaved and dumped it, one leg at a time, on top of its heads. There was still one head missing, though, and Hera was tapping her foot ominously. The ground began to smoke. Demon ran from place to place, searching furiously, but it was no good—the ninth head was nowhere to be seen. He knew he was going to have to risk asking for help. He cleared his throat, which seemed to be full of thistle prickles.
“I’mterriblysorrytobotheryou, YourMajestic Goddessness, butIcan’tfindthelasthead,” he said very quickly, before she could turn the staff on him again.
Hera didn’t reply. She simply pointed her staff at an enormous rock, black with blood and soot. The rock exploded, and Demon threw himself to the ground as shards and slivers of sharp stone flew past him with a zzzzipping noise like a swarm of angry hornets. One gashed his cheek open, and he could feel the blood dripping down his face.
He looked up cautiously. Where the rock had been was now a hole, and in the hole he could see something glinting. He crawled over to it. There lay the Hydra’s ninth head. It had a huge lump of glittering gold set right in the middle of it, just between the eyes. Demon reached into the hole and picked it up. Then he stood and placed it with the other eight heads in the chariot.
On the journey back to Olympus, Demon thought and thought as Offy and Yukus slithered over his cuts and bruises, healing him. How was he going to mend Hera’s pet? Surely Hephaestus had said that chopping off something’s head was fatal? And the Hydra had had all of its nine heads chopped off. That was probably nine times as fatal.
He just hoped the magic medicine box would help him. If it didn’t, he was in big, big trouble. Being eaten by hundred-armed monster trouble, in fact. Demon didn’t think he could possibly feel any more scared than he already did. But he reckoned that a trip down the poo chute to Tartarus might just do the trick.
CHAPTER 9
THE HYDRA’S FATE
The Hydra rested on the table in the hospital shed, hanging off the edges. It wasn’t breathing much. There was just a pathetic-sounding wheeze from one of its throats every few minutes. Its heart didn’t seem to be beating at all. All nine heads lay limp and listless. The bandages that attached them to its necks, although neat and tidy, were completely useless.
The magic medicine box had provided him with a huge pot of its usual wound-healing formula and a large paintbrush. Demon had done exactly what it had told him, but it was no good. Even after he’d fitted the right heads back on the right necks, the poor beast lay nearly as still and cold as when he had first seen it.
“C’mon, box. Please. There must be something else we can do,” he begged it. But the box remained silent, its numbers now flashing a frantic red instead of the normal blue.
“Error message, error message, error message,” it said over and over again in a high monotonous squawk. It was obviously baffled or broken.
As Demon shut its lid, he began to despair. He thought and thought, but by now he had done so much thinking that his brain just felt tired and full of nothing but fear and worry. Hera had gone back to her palace, but Demon could still hear her last words to him rattling around in his head.
“Remember, stable boy, find out how to mend my pet quickly. Or else.” She had pointed her staff meaningfully in the direction of the muckheaps as the peacocks had started up their infernal shrieking again.
How long did he have before she came back to check on him? Did she even need to check on him? Maybe she could just watch him in some magic mirror. Demon shivered. He badly needed some advice, and he needed it at once, since the box was now useless to him. Did he dare leave the Hydra alone to go and see if Hephaestus was back? No. Perhaps he shouldn’t risk it, just in
case. He stuck his head out of the hospital–shed door.
“Althea,” he called. “Are you there?” There was no reply. “Althea,” he called louder. Still nothing. “ALTHEA!” he yelled. Almost at once the nymph floated around the corner of the building.
“All right, all right,” she said. “Keep your eyebrows on. No need to wake up all of Olympus with your shouting. I was busy polishing Aphrodite’s camellias for the party tomorrow, if you want to know. Now what is it this time?”
“Could you be a really, really nice nymph?” he asked, smiling his most appealing smile—the one that made his dimples appear and usually worked on his mom. Althea tossed her hair and pouted.
“Depends,” she said. “Not if it involves offending Hera. I heard those wretched peacocks of hers screeching when they were here. She hates the nymphs enough already, and I don’t want to be turned into a cow like poor Io was.”
“It’s only keeping an eye on the Hydra while I go and get Hephaestus,” he said. “I don’t want to leave the poor beast alone while it’s in this state. I’ll give you a whole box of Hestia’s honey cakes if you do,” he added temptingly. Demon knew perfectly well by now that nymphs loved anything sweet. They were always sucking nectar out of the flowers.
“Oh, all right, then,” said Althea. “Hand them over.” Demon ran up to his loft at once. It caused him a pang to see his precious loukoumades disappearing into Althea’s mouth faster than a snake down a drainpipe—but he felt it was well worth losing them. “Yum!” she said indistinctly through a mass of sticky crumbs.
“Send the griffin to Heffy’s mountain for me right away if there’s any change at all,” he said. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Once again Demon was panting as he got to the forge. He dashed in. Hephaestus was definitely back, and Demon felt relief flooding over him. The fire was roaring higher and hotter than he’d ever seen it, and the smith god was banging away with his hammer at a large shield, which was glowing a fierce silvery-white with heat. The noise was indescribably loud.
“Hephaestus! Hephaestus!” shouted Demon, jumping up and down and waving to attract his attention. The automaton robot raised its head and reached out a silvery-gold hand to poke Hephaestus in the ribs. Hephaestus turned his head and saw Demon.
“GET OUT RIGHT NOW!” he bellowed urgently just as the forge flared into the shape of a ferocious-looking dragon head.
Flames billowed out of the dragon’s roaring mouth and wreathed the whole forge area in silver-white fire. Demon jumped backward toward the door just in time. There was a smell of burning hair as his eyebrows and bangs were singed right off. Then there was one last almighty BANG from the hammer, and the flames died down and retreated with an angry snarl. Hephaestus limped over to Demon, picked him up by the front of his tunic, and shook him till his teeth rattled.
“NEVER, NEVER come in when the forge is fired up in dragon mode,” he shouted. “Didn’t you see the notice?”
He flung Demon down in front of a large slab of slate. There was a picture of a fearsome dragon spouting fire carved onto it with a large skull and crossbones. It was all too much. Demon burst into angry tears. He couldn’t help it. All the fear and worry boiled up inside him and erupted.
“There, there,” said Hephaestus more gently. “Never mind. But I don’t know what I would have said to your dad if you’d been burned to a crisp.” At the mention of his dad, Demon’s tears turned to a hot resentful rage.
“Why do you think he’d even be worried about me, anyway?” Demon screamed. “He just dumped me up here and left me. He hasn’t been to visit ONCE, even though he promised. I wish I were DEAD. And I soon WILL be. And I don’t CARE!” His nose was dripping snot, and he wiped it crossly with his hand.
Hephaestus picked him up, carried him inside the forge, and set him down on a table. Then he handed him a length of grimy cloth. “Stop shouting, blow your nose on this, and tell me what the matter is,” he said, handing Demon a glass of ambrosia.
Demon sipped at it. It tasted as vile as usual, but it did seem to calm him down a bit. He blew his nose.
“It’s the Hydra,” he began, sniffing loudly and disgustingly. When he had finished explaining to Hephaestus about Hera’s threat and how scary and horrid she’d been, and about how the magic box wasn’t helping, he looked the smith god in the eye. “I don’t think it can get better, really. You told me that chopped-off heads were impossible to mend. So I’m doomed to go down the poo chute, aren’t I?”
Hephaestus scratched his head. “Not necessarily,” he said. “I think I said almost impossible. Let’s go and have a look at this Hydra of yours, and then we’ll see.”
CHAPTER 10
THE MYSTERIOUS TASK
“You do know that Hera’s my mother, don’t you, Pandemonius?” asked Hephaestus as he limped slowly toward the Stables.
Demon swallowed. He’d forgotten that. And now he’d gone and said how awful and scary Hera was to her very own son. He opened his mouth to say he was sorry, but Hephaestus was still talking, so he shut up and listened. He couldn’t be in much more trouble than he already was, anyway, he thought.
“I know everyone thinks she’s horrible and grumpy—and she is most of the time—but she has a kind side. Sort of. She made Zeus accept me back on Olympus after he’d thrown me down to earth and smashed my bones up, you know. And she does love her pets in her own grouchy way. I reckon this job of mending the Hydra is some kind of test for you. She could perfectly well cure the beast herself if she wanted to. So you need to use your brains—if there are any inside that thick head of yours.”
He put out a huge hand and ruffled Demon’s hair. Of course, Demon’s brain immediately felt even more like mush than it had before. Thinking was something he’d already done a lot of, and he wasn’t at all sure he could do any more, let alone the kind that would solve a Hera task.
Demon pushed open the door of the hospital shed and went in, Hephaestus following close behind. Althea was floating around the Hydra’s heads, humming.
“No change,” she said. “Now can I please get back to polishing Aphrodite’s flowers? I’ve only got about a hundred more to do before supper, and I don’t like the smell in here.” With that, she flitted out the door, flicking a kiss at Hephaestus as she went. “Don’t look so serious, Heffy,” she called over her shoulder. “It doesn’t suit your big sooty old face!”
The Hydra lay exactly where Demon had left it. The magic medicine box lay silent beside it.
“Doesn’t look too good, does it?” Demon said. His voice was gloomy and sad—just like he felt, really. Hephaestus hobbled around the beast and poked it with a large grimy finger. The head with the golden lump in its center wheezed once.
“Not looking too brilliant, I agree. And you say the box couldn’t help?” Hephaestus reached over the Hydra’s huge green belly and opened the lid of the box. Right away it started squawking its error-message refrain and flashing red. “Stupid thing,” said Hephaestus, giving it a thump. “It’s gone and caught one of the viruses it’s supposed to cure. Hang on a minute.” He took a large golden screwdriver out of his belt and poked about in the box’s innards. It stopped squawking almost immediately.
“State the nature of your beast’s medical emergency,” it said in its normal metallic tones.
“Hydra with chopped-off heads still seems to be nearly dead,” said Demon, hopelessly. It was pretty much exactly what he’d told it before.
The box clicked and whirred, its symbols now returned to their usual clear blue. Demon and Hephaestus waited. And waited. And waited. Finally the box made a clunking sound, and out of it rose a large empty golden bucket and a pot. The pot contained one very large apple seed and some golden-orange earth, which smelled slightly of cinnamon.
“One Hydra cure-all,” it said in its usual smug way. And then it shut down, refusing to say another word.
“What on
Olympus do I do with those?” Demon asked Hephaestus. He couldn’t for the life of him see how one apple seed, an empty bucket, and some soil were going to cure a seemingly lifeless beast with no heads.
Hephaestus began to smile. Then he began to laugh.
“Oh, ho ho ho! Very clever. I see exactly what the solution is. That’s one very clever box, though I say it myself.”
“Well, I DON’T,” said Demon, feeling angry all over again. He hated it when people (or, indeed, gods) laughed at him. It made him feel all stupid and young, like he was a baby or something. Hephaestus just grinned.
“Oh no—I’m not making it easy for you,” said Hephaestus. “That would make Hera very upset with me indeed. That box has provided you with everything you need right there, so work it out, boy, work it out. I’ll give you just two clues: Ask yourself what you cart out of the Stables every day, and remember what you know about Hera. Good luck, and hurry up about it—my mother isn’t exactly renowned for her patience!”
With that, Hephaestus limped off toward his mountain.
Demon stamped his foot. Then he looked at the Hydra, lying there all limp and pathetic and wheezy. The most important thing right now was to get it better and to get Hera off his back. He could be properly furious with Hephaestus after that, if he still felt like it. But what about the clues Hephaestus had given him? What was it that he carted out of the Stables every day? He paced around and around the Hydra, racking his mushy brain for ideas. Then he smacked himself on the head.
“Of course,” he said out loud. “Beast poo. That’s what I cart out of the Stables every day. But what on earth do I do with it? And how does it fit in with the apple seed and the soil and the bucket?” He continued pacing, trying to remember every fact he knew about Hera, but nothing seemed relevant. Then the griffin poked its beak around the door.
“Everything all right, Pan’s scrawny kid?” Demon heard the griffin ask. “Everyone’s getting a bit smelly and hungry, so I let myself out. You haven’t been on the evening rounds and we miss your happy little face, not to mention your shoveling skills.”
