Diana Wynne Jones’s Magic and Myths Collection. Diana Wynne Jones
she said to the man, in a high panicky voice, “did you know that there’s three golden apples from the star trees down there?”
He was very interested. “Really?” he said. “Where would those be?”
Hayley pointed, in probably quite the wrong direction. The man laughed gladly and set off that way, first in big strides and then almost running.
“Good done,” Martya said as he disappeared in the darkness among the trees. “That is how to get rid of a god quick.”
“What are you talking about?” Merope said. “What god?”
“Bacchus,” Martya said. “Is god of booze. He got you tight.”
“Never mind him,” Hayley said. “Mother, I’ve found Dad, but he says only you can rescue him. He’s in a place where they make him do unending work.”
“What? My poor Sisyphus!” Merope said. “How long have I been here?”
“Centuries,” said Martya. “This way, come. I have transport.”
They set off downhill again. Hayley still hung on to Merope’s arm, but now it was less to keep her from rejoining the riot and more because she had a mother at last, which was a thing more wonderful than the mythosphere. With every step, Merope seemed to become more awake and more of a person. At first she smiled down at Hayley in a bewildered way. Then she said, “I can’t believe this!” and wiped her hand down her tattered skirt. “I’m so filthy and sticky. I can hardly believe you’re really Hayley – though I know you are. I remember you as a tiny baby. And,” she said to Martya, “I don’t understand about you at all.”
“I help Hayley,” Martya said. “I go adventuring to the Pleiades and they try to make me work. Hayley buys me lovely shoes. Look.” She stopped and held one foot up. In the murky light Hayley could just see that Martya was wearing the pink shoes with cowboy fringes.
They went on, and the light grew better. Someone had stuck one of the flaring torches in the ground and, by its light, two tall people with white hair were anxiously examining Troy. “I’m all right,” Troy was telling them. “None of this blood is mine. Honestly.”
“Are you sure? Your face is pretty scratched,” Harmony said. She was standing next to Troy, shivering. “I hate those Maenads!”
Hayley cried out with relief and dragged her mother over to them. There she risked letting go of Merope so that she could hug the two tall men. “Flute!” she said. “Fiddle! I knew you were around here somewhere!”
Flute patted Hayley’s shoulder. “Did you get my star?” he asked.
While Hayley was nodding and saying to Flute, “It’s in my smallest pocket,” Fiddle spoke to Martya over Hayley’s head. “Nice to see you again Yaga. Don’t tell me you’re doing good deeds now!”
“Only to Hayley,” Martya said. “Her mother is this sticky Merope here.”
“Oh, wonderful!” Harmony said. She took hold of both Merope’s blood and wine covered hands. “I’m so glad to see you again, Aunt Merry.”
“Hey, listen!” Troy said. “Look.”
From downhill came a sound that was definitely from a car fighting its way up the mountain in low gear. The beams from its headlights swung this way and that among the trees as the car turned the corners of the steep track. They almost could have been searchlights hunting for someone.
“That’s Uncle Jolyon’s taxi,” Hayley said.
Everyone knew it was Uncle Jolyon. Troy and Harmony looked at one another, wondering what to do.
“Is no problem.” Martya said. She clicked her fingers towards a dark clump of trees on the other side of the path. Part of the clump immediately rose up into a tall, square shape. It unfolded two long legs like chicken legs and stalked towards them. When it reached Martya, it stopped and let down a ladder from the balcony on its front. “Is my hut,” Martya said. “Up, all! Up, up, up!”
Flute took hold of Hayley and pushed her up the ladder. The rest followed, Fiddle pushing Merope, who kept getting her legs wrapped up in the rags of her dress, and Harmony helping Troy because Troy was still shaky. Martya came up last and the ladder came up with her. As soon as Martya was on the balcony, the hut turned and started walking away, creaking all over from the weight of seven people.
“You must show the way,” Martya said to Fiddle.
Fiddle nodded and pointed more to the left. The hut turned again and went crashing and swishing across the mountainside. Before the trees quite closed in behind it, Hayley and Troy, craning anxiously from a corner of the balcony, saw the taxi arrive in the glade beside the flaring torch and go roaring on past, as if the driver had not realised that anyone had been there.
“Oh good!” said Hayley.
“He’ll catch up in the end,” Flute said to her. “Be ready with your star when he does. I’ll tell you what to do.”
The hut paced onwards. Fiddle kept pointing the way and the hut walked where his finger pointed. Hayley looked down at the toes of its big bird feet and then up to see that Fiddle was taking them across the mythosphere. The great feet goose-stepped from pine needles to rock, then into a desert, then on to a busy motorway, where they miraculously missed all the cars, and from there to a floaty pink strand. Here one of the great feet nearly went straight through the floatiness, but the hut saved itself with a twist and a twitch and strode on to a much firmer blue strand. Finally it marched into some kind of industrial estate full of cars parked beside low white buildings. The hut tramped straight across this place, kicking cars aside and crunching through the corners of buildings, until it came to a low white block labelled STONE BROS LTD in big red letters. Hayley somehow expected it to stop here, but instead it simply kept on and stamped on the building. Half the wall fell in and the hut came to a halt, marching in place and creaking and groaning all over, while glass tinkled and lumps of concrete and flat pieces of wall fell this way and that. When it had made a big hole in the building, the hut stopped trampling and let down its ladder.
“Come on,” Flute said. “Quickly.” He pushed Merope and Hayley on to the ladder. “The rest of you had better stay here,” he said over his shoulder as he followed Hayley and Merope down.
Hayley seized her mother’s hand and they ducked in together through the crumpled, sagging hole. Inside, the striplights were on and everyone was working away at their desks, just as if nothing had happened at all “ except that the nearest people wearily slapped their hands down on their piles of paper as the wind from the broken wall threatened to blow them away and people further from the damage irritably blew and waved at the dust from the breakage. Hayley spotted her father at his desk in the far corner, working harder than anyone else there, and began dragging her mother towards him. But, halfway there, Merope saw him too, let go of Hayley’s hand and rushed across between the desks. She knocked several trays of paper flying, but people simply sighed and bent to pick them up, without seeming to notice anything else.
“Cyrus!” Merope shouted. “My Sisyphus!”
It rang round the room and several people actually looked up. Hayley’s father looked up among the rest. When he saw Merope bearing down on him, filthy hair flying, rags streaming, he stopped working, leant back and smiled. And smiled. Merope put both sticky hands down on his IN-tray and smiled back. They both smiled and gazed as if there was nothing else in the world.
“Oh, come on! Come on!” Hayley said to them, hopping from foot to foot.
She could see the woman who did not want to ladder her tights marching towards them from the other end of the room. The woman had been carrying a massive pile